


Good Grief

by waterfront



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, Kate ain't gonna fuck wit you, Slow Burn, also i just want seth in long sleeves and a beanie, alternate season 2, basically how i would run the show if sethkate was the only important plot point, bearded seth is best seth, i am weak, seth's guilt is such a motivation force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:32:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfront/pseuds/waterfront
Summary: “But okay, fine, let’s say the answer to your problem isn’t with the girl you abandoned five years ago. The woman, or whatever, who can fix your brother lives in Bear Claw, Alaska.” Richie’s been bitten by something even culebras dare not mention. He’s dying. Unless Seth can repair his relationship with Kate, Richie’s a goner. Seems like enough motivation to seek out the girl you left naked in a motel room five years ago. But he left with questions unanswered, and with a new life built around her, Kate has secrets of her own. Seth should have remembered something he learned years ago: never underestimate Kate Fuller.





	1. Go to Hell, Seth Gecko

**Author's Note:**

> So I am slightly obsessed with the concept of just how far Seth's guilt will take him. If he's not feeling guilty about Richie, it's Kate, and especially after what's happened recently, I'm pretty sure he'd tear apart heaven and earth to protect her. Which is what I hope happens in the finale! Either way, Happy Halloween everybody! I'll post a chapter a day so hopefully we can all survive the finale together!
> 
> Also I modeled the town after Eagle's Nest, Alaska, if anyone would like to Google Map it up.

**Chapter One: Go to Hell, Seth Gecko**

“Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II

               “You gonna be alright in here by yourself?”

Richie nodded, shivering, and adjusted himself in the car seat. His arms crossed, he scratched his jaw and closed his eyes. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I just feel like a jackass for letting you go in there alone.”

“Hey,” Seth hit him lightly on the shoulder. His brother opened one eye. “You don’t worry about that. You focus on getting better and I’ll do the rest.”

Under the yellow spotlight of Buffalo Bill’s parking lot, Richie’s skin was bleached white. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. Only an hour ago he had finally stopped coughing up blood. The puncture wound on his right shoulder was leaking puss and had already ruined all his starched white shirts. Bucky’s Gas station in South Texas was selling sweatshirts for nine dollars a pop. Richie groaned when he saw his brother approach the car with the grey thing in his hands.

               “You call if anything changes, alright?” Seth put the extra burner phone in his brother’s hand. His palms were clammy and his skin was cold. “Hang in there. The professor’s gotta know something.”

               “And if he doesn’t?” The whites of his eyes were a sickly yellow.

Seth’s mouth went dry. “Not gonna happen.”

He took a pair of black leather gloves out of his back pocket. Uneasily, he slipped one over his left, and then his mangled right. He knew Richie was watching so his gaze couldn’t linger, so he covered his hand as quickly as he could. What would have happened if Richie hadn’t found him that night? So high and so close to an overdose, he floated over the crevice between life and death. How many times had he told his brother to keep his own gun cleaned? _How many times?_

Another reason among the other thousand that this had to work. The professor _had_ to know something because with every passing day, what now felt like every hour now, Richie was getting worse. He wasn’t healing from the bite. The whole job had gone belly-up about a week ago and Richie resembled a diseased skeleton more and more as each day passed. They were out of options. Seth never believed he would ever have to look up Professor Aiden Tanner’s number, after everything that happened at the Twister. And yet, here he was. Almost seven years later back in Texas and right back in the shit that they waded through last time. Seth was sick and tired of rustling up dusty corpses.

He stepped out of the car, and slammed the door after him. Richie had his eyes closed again. A hard knot forming below his heart, Seth turned and headed into the professor’s choice of meeting place.

The moment his brother left, Richie knew he was going to be sick. He cracked the door open just as a hot swoop hit his stomach and he retched, mostly blood. He wiped his cracked lips with the back of the sweatshirt. Something came off on the sleeve, and it wasn’t blood. Squinting, Richie held it up to the light. A thin layer of skin. Like he was molting. Rotting from the inside. In the car next to him, he caught eyes with two tiny brown ones staring at him. In one hand, the little boy clutched a toy dinosaur, the rest of his face obscured by the car door. He waved slowly.

Another pang hit Richie in the gut, but it wasn’t nausea. It was hunger. Richie leaned back into the car, slammed the door shut, and locked himself in. The little boy was still watching him.

* * *

               “You know, of all the shit that’s happened, I don’t know why I’m surprised the Sex Machine is still a fuckin’ pervert.”

               “That’s Professor Pervert to you, shithead.” The waitress, dressed in what could only loosely be described as clothing, dropped their drinks off. Tanner eyed her and Seth could have sworn there was a flash of yellow as he followed the curve of her ass, his mouth pulled up into a twisted smirk. “What can I say? As an immortal, I don’t gotta do a whole lot to keep myself in the ring, if you know what I mean.”

Seth rolled his eyes. “Then how do you explain the thing growing off the side of your head?”

               “Oh, this?” Tanner grinned, all teeth, and turned his head to show off his greasy top knot. “This, you backwater idiot, is a man bun. The college chicks go apeshit for it. Couldn’t tell you why. But what I can tell you is that I am literally drowning in the sweet p—,”

               “Nope, stop right there.” Seth leaned forward and tapped the sticky table. “I’m not here to talk about how you manage to trick dumb co-eds into sleeping with you. How you’ve ever touched a female vagina is beyond me, but that’s not why we’re meeting.”

Tanner shrugged and took a sip of beer. “Suite yourself, _homebre_. Lay it on me, then. Why did Los Hermanos Geckos suddenly show up, askin’ lil old me for some help?”

The knot under Seth’s heart shifted. “It’s Richie. He was bitten by something.”

               “Uh, duh, I was there, remember? I got bitten myself, you know—,”

               “No, _not then_ , at the Twister. Recently. We heard rumors that there was culebra hide-out near Zacatecas, one with more gold than we could carry out. So, we talked to the right snakes, we greased some palms, and it seemed like a pretty in-and-out kinda deal.”

Tanner’s face flickered with something resembling a frown, but he let Seth continue.

               “From the intel, this place was apparently the drop point for some big mob boss—,”

               “Culebra boss?”

               “No, and here’s the rub, it was a different group of other fuckers that makes the snakes look like little fucking earth worms—,”

Tanner nearly spat out his beer. “ _The felidaes_? You went after a felidaes treasure trove??”

               “What? They’re just a little furrier than you fucks.”

               “And our natural enemies! Okay, like on the supernatural food chain, culebras are generally top bitch, but shit— you do not fuck with a felidae and live to tell the story, man!”

               “Well, it would have been fucking different if it was only the West side we had to deal with . . .”

The professor leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

Seth sighed, focusing on a point on the table. He scratched the back of his head, the hair longer than it had been in a while and it was driving him batshit. Then again, he had been a bit busy. “Look, the mob boss had a name. They called him El Devorador.”

               “And that is where this fair tale comes to an end!” Tanner stood up, waving for another waitress. “Yo, check, please.”

Seth sprung to his feet. “Whoa, whoa, I paid you five hundred bucks for you to sit here and tell me what the fuck is wrong with my brother. You haven’t done jack shit!”

Tanner froze, any trace of that queasy bravado gone from his face. “Please, for the love of the Almighty, please tell me El Devorador didn’t bite Richard.”

* * *

Hunger. Raw hunger.

Richard felt his joints crack from the starvation settling into his bones. His body lurched forward, every muscle constricted, his mouth salivating. He could hear them all. The blood rushing in the bodies of waitresses, cooks, patrons, those on the highway ten miles behind him. He shook his head to clear his mind, to focus on what mattered, and flakes of skin fluttered into his lap. Panic lanced through him before another wave of hunger crashed into him. In his clenched fist, the burner phone dissolved into particles.

* * *

               “You can’t fucking leave now!”

               “Watch me, cowboy.”

Tanner finished paying the waitress before finishing off his second beer in two gulps. Seth grabbed him by the shoulders, knocking the bottle out of his hands. “You tell me how to save Richie, or I swear to Christ, I’m going to use your skin as the interior leather for my car!”

The professor made a face of disgust. “Ooh, that’s graphic some imagery for you. But, alright, look, take this.” He took out a book from inside his leather jacket and handed it to Seth. “In the culebra community, there’s been talk of someone who is seen as both a healer and a, uh, fixer of sorts. _She mends you_ , is the actual translation. They call her _La Muñeca_. She lives in a place where no culebra can survive, in the palm of a bear.”

Seth frowned at the book. It didn’t even have a title on its brown exterior. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Tanner rolled his eyes. “It means she’s probably somewhere North, if she exists at all. Her story, as culebra mythology goes, is actually a sad one. She started out as a young priestess in her village, all sweet and pure-like. But her beauty upset the gods, so they sent two warrior brothers to kidnap her and take her away. In the process, they burned down her entire village and killed her whole family. Now the two warriors have goals of their own, mind you, and so they split up, one brother going after glory, the other going after gold. The brother who wanted nothing more than to swim in lakes of gold takes her with him. They traverse up and down Mexico, looking for their next score, for years and years. By this time, she’s no longer this little backwater girl, but a fighter. But she never kills. She teaches this brother about compassion, and love, and dumb shit like that. One day he falls in love with her and takes her like all real men do— Seth, are you gonna puke? Aim that-a-way—”

He had fallen down into the seat behind him. There wasn’t enough air, or too much of it. His head was spinning. This was all . . . familiar. “Yeah— I’m fine— what happens next?”

Tanner frowned, unconvinced. “Well, okay, one day warrior brother realizes she’s made him weak and he no longer loves the flashy gold like he used to. So he cuts her lose. Says, sayonara, and peaces out. But what is she going to do now? She hikes up her skirts and goes back to where her original village burnt down and rebuilds the damn thing. People from all across the land come to see this lady build houses and create lakes and plow the land . . . all by her lonesome. A couple of them stay, and she swears protection over them. As long as she leads this village, no harm shall ever come to anyone who lives there. It was said that she gave people exactly what they needed when they came into her village, like she could see right into their souls and fix them. She’s got the name _La Muñeca_ because she was so pretty, _like a doll_ , but she also fixes and sews us back together . . . you get it?”

Seth’s mouth had gone dry. No. No way. There was no possible fucking way that—

               “D-did she have a name before all that?”

Tanner’s eyebrow quirked up and he grinned, like he had a juicy secret. “Nope. Nobody knows her real name. That’s part of the whole gig, man. She never let anyone knew her name because she wants to curse the sunovabitch who hurt her. If he doesn’t know her name, he can never find her. How’s that for revenge porn?” He picked up Seth’s untouched beer and sipped.

               “And you think this chick can help Richie? Wherever she is?”

The professor smacked his lips, judging Seth’s drink of choice. “Yep. Legend goes that the gods turned her one surviving family member into a culebra to make her suffer his eternal life. But he, suffering his terrible affliction of eating people, wanted to change. So he went to _La Muñeca_ and she took the snake right out of him.”

               “What? Like she defanged him?”

               “Like made him mortal again, Seth.” He gazed over the rim of the bottle, his words heavy. “This _Muñeca_ is the real deal. That story is the only known case of a culebra ever reverting to their non-scaly ways. If your boy needs a good kick in the pants, she’ll do it.”

Seth leaned back, mesmerized by a drawing in the book. It was of a small, brunette girl bowing her head in prayer. His stomach churned.

               “So, hypothetically, if one wanted to find this _Muñeca_ . . .”

               “Bear Claw, Alaska.”

               “Excuse me?”

Tanner leaned back, his arms stretched across the back of the seat, grinning like a cat with his mouthful of feathers. “These stories aren’t just bedtime tales that culebra parents tell their culebra babies to keep them in school. Mostly everything has some truth to it. Me and a buddy of mine did some calculations, some research, and yeah, if I had to bet my sweet left ass cheek, Bear Claw is where Kate Fuller now lives.”

Seth could feel his pulse in his throat as he looked up to the professor, who had known exactly where to punch. “Oh, get off your high horse. You thought your little getaway into the Mexican desert with one of the tightest little yummies I’ve ever laid eyes on, _wasn’t_ going to be public culebra news, then you are about as dumb as you look. I don’t know all the details, but shit, Seth, you fucked that one right up.”

               “This can’t be Kate,” he argued. “She wasn’t some priestess in Mexico five hundred years ago.”

Tanner shrugged. “Culebras get a little . . . hyperbolic about this shit. It’s their religion, man. But okay, fine, let’s say the answer to your problem isn’t with the girl you abandoned five years ago. The woman, or whatever, who can fix your brother lives in Bear Claw, Alaska. I’d bet my—,”

               “Ass, you said . . .”

The picture was pulling his gaze downward again. It was just Tanner being the dick he always was. Kate wasn’t in Alaska. She was back in Bethel, or fuckin’ Georgia, already through school, maybe with a job and a boyfriend and maybe a fuckin dog too. She was happy, wherever she was. Away from all of this shit.

               “Look, Seth, I gotta ask.” Tanner leaned forward as though asking for personal advice. “Did you ever hit that? The Fuller girl, I mean, because, wow—,”

A petrified scream shattered the loose atmosphere of the restaurant. Seth immediately reached for his gun, the knot pressing painfully against his heart. _No, Richie, no!_

* * *

Feed. Consume. Satiate.

His hands were already bloody, shredded from breaking his way out of their stolen car. He rained down a thunderstorm of fists against the glass of the car nearby. He could hear the boy’s pulse pumping in his ears. Gallons of blood rushing. Blasting. Red and hot. Like the sun just waiting to be swallowed. A copper sun, brilliant and shrieking. His fangs were vibrating from need.

The glass finally gave way.

* * *

 

Seth knocked open the restaurant doors, his heart pounding. Across the deserted parking lot, the scream grew louder and he heard something not even remotely human roar in agony.

He saw the little boy locked inside his parent’s van, clutching that dinosaur to his chest, his eyes wide and wet, and his little lungs aching in terror. Richie was clawing at him through the opposite window, fangs fully extended, and the front of the sweatshirt was covered in blood.

Richie grabbed the ankle of the little boy . . . and time slowed down.

Someone was screaming Richie’s name and the gun in his hand was cold but so far away. Everything was so far away.

_Please, let me get there in time_.

* * *

They were in southern Wyoming when it started to snow. Seth tried to turn on the heater but the professor’s truck only spluttered angrily.

               “C’mon, you piece of shit, work.” He smacked the top of the dashboard, trying to keep an eye on the increasingly dark road ahead. He rolled up the window next to him as several flakes fluttered inside. He stuck his free hand up into his armpit for warmth, his breath coming out in white puffs before his eyes.

The clock read 11:27 and the professor had said to feed Richie every two hours. Seth’s own stomach gurgled at the thought of food, so he pulled off to the side of the road. He yanked the _420 Blaze It_ sweatshirt from Colorado over his head and reached into the medical bucket on the floor of the passenger’s side. He thought of Tanner’s face as he beat his brother unconscious to keep him away from the kid. Tanner gave up two weeks of blood bags without a second thought. The truck and subsequent trailer, preloaded with a refrigerator and generator, was actually proposed by the professor as well. Seth slid out of the seat, two blood bags, and a bag of burgers and fries in his arms, the keys jangling in his pocket. He unlocked the trailer and climbed in.

Guilt bloomed in his chest. It was pitch black and freezing. He thought the padlock was a bit much, but Tanner insisted, his face pale and his eyes wide as they loaded a bloody and unconscious Richie into the trailer. Seth’s stomach twisted when he realized the white flecks covering Richie were skin particles. Tanner just shrugged. _I got no fucking clue about that, man_.

Seth unlocked the lock and cracked open the door. Richie was sleeping, his skin covered in a fine sheen of frost.

               “Hey, Richie, wake up.” He shook his brother’s shoulder and heard ice crack.

Richie’s eyes fluttered open. Even his voice sounded frozen. “Seth? What’s up?”

               “I’m gonna need you to eat, buddy, alright?” Seth cut a hole in one of the blood bags and held it in front of Richie. Large patches of skin were missing from his face and hands. Underneath was a thick gray layer. In the right light, Seth could have sworn they were scales. But for now, Richie’s bloodshot eyes no longer looked so clouded. He shifted and sat up, one blue-tinged hand reaching for the bag. “There ya go. Eat up.”

Richie closed his eyes almost peacefully as he drained the blood. When Seth had woken him up in North Oklahoma and explained what had happened— why all of this was necessary— it looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. All the air had been knocked out of him, and Richie merely nodded. He refused the blood bag that night.

Seth sat back on the floor of the trailer and took out his own burger. It was cold, but so was Richie’s dinner.

               “Where are we?” Richie asked, licking his mouth clean.

Seth shrugged, his mouthful of food. “Somewhere in Wyoming, I think.”

Richie nodded slowly. “We’re making good time.”

               “We’ll get there when we get there.”

Richie was fiddling with the next blood bag. “Seth, what happened at the restaurant—,”

Seth made a noise of indignation, half a burger still in his mouth. He shook his finger before swallowing. “Nope, Richie, don’t do that to yourself. You weren’t in control. You wouldn’t have done that if it had been you.”

               “Yeah, well, I’m getting real sick and tired of being somebody’s bitch.”

               “That’s why we’re doing this. We’re gonna find this _Muñeca_ chick and everything’s gonna be fine.”

Richie sat quiet for a moment, sipping almost hesitantly from the bag. He glanced at his brother, before reaching down beside his hip and taking out the leather-bound book the professor had given Seth. “Quaint little bedtime story you got right here.”

Seth looked down, rubbing ketchup off the side of his mouth.

               “It does sound a lot like what we did to Kate.”

He looked into his brother’s eyes and saw shared guilt there. Richie took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses of the layer of ice. “Why do you never talk about what happened with her in Mexico?”

               “Because nothing fucking did,” Seth murmured, hurling the half-eaten burger back inside the soggy bag. He stood and opened his hand. “Gimme the book, Richard. You need to rest and we gotta get back on the road.”

               “Why do you always do this, Seth?” He tried to stand but his muscles gave too easily. Richie settled for glowering and keeping the book tight to his chest. “Why is it every time this shit comes up you shut down? You gotta talk it out, brother.”

               “No, I fucking don’t. Give me the goddamn book so we can get out of here!”

Richie continued to scowl. Sighing impatiently, Seth snatched the book from his brother’s clutches and turned to go.

               “So what part of it’s true?”

Seth froze, his back to the refrigerator.

               “If we’re hauling ass all the way to fucking Alaska, you gotta believe that some of it’s true. Which parts?”

Seth chewed a bit of his cheek, still not turning around.

Richie felt a flush of real anger go through him. “What are you going to say to her, huh? After all these years? You were so strung out when I found you in that alleyway, Seth, I know she did a number on you. What was it?”

Seth sighed and rubbed his palm into one eye. His fingers were going numb from the cold. He finally turned around. “Look, when you make it through this and you get better, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, alright? What happened after the Twister, it’s . . . complicated, okay?”

Richie only glowered, petulant as always. Seth crouched by the edge of the refrigerator and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You just gotta trust me on this one. We’re gonna fix this and the Brothers Geckos are gonna be back, baby. Just you wait.”

His brother’s pale face fell, as though something dark and unsettling occurred to him too late in life. “Do you ever wish—,” he cut off, knowing he couldn’t finish without ruining everything.

               “Wish what, Richie?”

His lips cracked when he tried to smile. “Never mind, brother. Just getting delusions of grandeur again.”

Seth reached forward and put their foreheads together, as he always did before a big job. “We’ll get through this. I swear it.”

Richie nodded and Seth leaned back, patting his cheek. “Sleep if you can. I’ll wake you up in two hours.”

Seth stood and Richie laid down, crossing his arms like one of those cheap movie vampires. He closed his eyes and Seth shut the door again. He locked it and headed back to the truck.

It was still freezing inside the cab. Seth tossed the book into the passenger’s seat and started the engine again. A weak puff of hot air bloomed in the cab. “Thank Christ,” Seth moaned and put both hands over the heater.

As the cab warmed slowly, Seth glanced at the book beside him. It was a book of culebra lore, _La Muñeca_ one of the stories in its pages. He had read it word for word and the words now infested his mind like a sickness. She was seen as a heroine, this little girl turned warrior. Seth felt his cold dinner rise in the back of his throat and he shoved the book into the glove compartment. He adjusted his rearview mirror and pulled out onto the road again.

With a chill that ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature outside, Seth considered it. She was twenty-five now, wherever she was. Five years without him. He turned on the truck’s bright lights to cut through the thick drifting snow.

Wherever that somewhere was, he hoped with every fiber of his being it wasn’t Bear Claw, Alaska.

* * *

It was minutes before day broke when Seth crossed the second American border into Alaska. His back ached from hunger, exhaustion, and the cold. From a glance in the side mirror, the half-rimmed circles beneath his eyes had darkened somewhere between British Columbia and McCarthy. The thick black beard lining his jaw was greasy and unkempt. He also hadn’t showered since Washington. Seth pulled the stolen woolen grey hat over his ears and another overcoat on top of the _420_ sweatshirt that reeked of day old burgers. He vaguely wondered if he smelled as sour as he felt.     

               “Up and at ‘em, little brother.” He tossed a blood bag onto a sleeping Richie’s lap. He only stirred, shifting slowly in his sleep. There were patches of hair missing from his head.

               “C’mon, wakey, wakey.” Seth dropped into his spot next to the refrigerator. The metal immediately froze his ass, but this far into the trip, he barely registered it. He popped open the coffee he had picked up at the rest stop five miles back. Miraculously, it was still warm and Seth held it under his chin, letting the heat melt the ice on his beard. He took two big gulps before turning to the McGriddle in the bag.

Richie still hadn’t woken up. Seth kicked the side paneling. “C’mon, get up, you gotta eat.”

               “Five more minutes . . .” His brother rolled over, still deeply asleep.

Seth rolled his eyes and finished chewing his bite. “God, you are useless.”

Richie only murmured in response.

               “Even as a kid, it took you twenty minutes to get out of bed. You were always first in everything, except that.”

The sweatshirt over his chest barely even moved as Richie slept. Seth watched him but saw the road ahead. Over a thousand miles of driving had opted for a lot of thinking time, and that was Seth Gecko’s least favorite type of time spent. The radio had crapped out early and it was either contemplate this possibility or listen to the air get colder and colder by the mile. He had been picking at Richie’s question, like scratching off cheap paint, for days now and hadn’t come up with a single cohesive answer.

_What could he possibly say?_

His right hand tightened painfully, as it always did when it got cold out. As they drove deeper into the Great White North, the pain was increasing and every time he thought of what they would find in Bear Claw, it became unbearable. He thought of the night he ruined his hand. It had been exactly six weeks to the day that he had . . . that they had . . . and he was alone in the world. Truly alone.

               _“Seth, what were you doing in the bathroom? Where are you going? Last night . . . are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Did you not like . . . it?”_

He thought of the two years in Mexico leading up to that night. It wasn’t happiness he had been chasing the night he got dangerously high. It was a shadow. A shadow that he had watched out of the corner of his eye for two years, but then it was gone and there was nothing but an agonizingly bright light he couldn’t hide from. The shadow, a mobile dancing figure that stood statuesque in all of his dreams and memories, was gone and he felt a hole in the world. Sure, at one point, there was happiness. There was happiness, and doubt, and anger, and fear, and a strange thrill that gripped him so tight it kept him awake every night until the sky was pink, like _her_ —

_Her fist tightened around the white bedsheet, pulling up over her chest, as though he was no longer allowed to look. “Why are you saying these things to me? I thought—,”_

_“Because they need to be said.”_

_“Seth, I can change. I promise—,”_

_“You’re too dependent on me. And I can’t do this shit anymore.”_

He ran away one morning because in a single decision, it became clear to him that the darkness inside, shoved in there by his father, patted down by his mother as she walked out the door, and left to fester, was never going to go away. He had made her cry in the worst possible way. He never even said sorry for that, among other things. He just got up and left her with the money, the car, and the part of himself that was aching and desperate for him to stay.

At least, that’s how it had been that morning as he took a bus to nowhere. There was a morning after that, and another one. And at least a dozen more before he got his hands on a fix that stifled everything. It tasted like cotton going down, but felt like a blue wave in Havana. It drove her out. It _kept_ her out, as it did with everything else. He wasn’t sure why he, of all people, continued to wake up morning after morning when there was nothing more that he wanted than to lay down in the cold dark earth. The blue wave crashed, throwing him on the rocks, and Richie— _God love ‘im_ — dragged his limp body onto shore. Things were better after that, after Richie ditched his new culebras buddies and came back to what mattered. In the nick of time, too.

Kate hadn’t been a name he thought of, or even said in years, and as Richie said, there’s a reason for all that. Kate was poison to him. It was either her or heroin and Richie made damned sure to keep both at bay. If Seth Gecko had a lick of sense in him, he would have turned this shit bucket around and drove to the nearest beach, letting his brother die in peace. But no, since birth, Seth Gecko was a fighter, built like one too. He had ingrained the same damned will to live into his little brother and together, the two of them probably could have stopped Death its tracks, out of sheer stubbornness. He was going to save his brother, and pay his debt, because what was life but a series of IOUs that built up like chains until one day you were thrown off the damn pier and you best hope you could swim with a fifty-pound choker around your neck. So, Seth was swimming. He was always swimming up, towards the light he said he was owed, but didn’t believe in for a second.

For two years, that light was Kate. Before he nearly destroyed her life again.

               _“Seth, please, I—,”_

_“Save it, princess. Save it for someone who cares.”_

_Her tears raced red against her pink face. She was ashamed and mortified that she found out he was a monster too late and he couldn’t feel his tongue in his mouth anymore._

_“Go to hell, Seth Gecko. Fuck you.”_

But she did smile, didn’t she? Discounting the glances, the questions, the teetering line they edged against for two years— Kate Fuller had been his best friend. His only friend and his conscience in a Mexican endless wasteland in an absurd chunk of time where even death was hot and reeking, and it took lovers, and strangers, and fathers, and little brothers and returned demons with their faces instead. . . so maybe it didn’t count. Maybe none of it really counted because if life had followed the straight and narrow, their paths never would have even crossed and his face would have been a flash on the screen she saw at breakfast, the reporter announcing the deaths of two small-time bank robbers. Maybe she even would have prayed for him.

But five years later and a thousand miles between dusk and dawn, Seth knew he was reaching for a bad hit again. What a shitty thing to admit— that he was hoping he would see her again.

Just to see her face even for a second would be—

But this was why he was a bastard and always would be a bastard. If Kate was actually in Alaska, that would mean walking away would have been for nothing. It would have been easy enough to ruin her, to bring her into his world. He could have kept her as his prisoner for the rest of their lives, but then one day, the Kate brought him to his knees would be gone. He needed to be a better man around Kate, needed to be everything he wanted to be but didn’t know how. But she made him _try_ and that was important. So he left. He left and he was ripped at the edges, and she was crying but firm when she told him to go to hell. Richie would call that irony, on the account of him already being there.

He used to love mornings, in a cheesy kind of way that Richie would no doubt tease him endlessly for. Now they were a memory of a crying young woman who had been his whole world.

His hand ached. His appetite was gone. Richie was still asleep in front of him. The McGriddle sat on the floor between his ankles, wrists resting on his knees.

Outside the trailer, it was dawn, the soft blue lens slowly retreating into the sky.

Seth scratched the back of his head again. What do you say to someone who was _almost_?

* * *

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when Seth drove past a faded sign, half of it covered in ice so that it blurred the remaining visible letters. He almost missed it, his mind elsewhere, and it wasn’t until the image registered in his sleep-deprived brain that he slammed on the breaks. Seth cut the engine and leapt out of the cab. With one shivering hand, he cleared away what he could.

               **You Have Now Entered Bear Claw City Limits**

Seth released a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. “Ho-ly sh-i-i-i-t . . .”

He stretched his back. Something cracked. He wasn’t sure if it was a joint or ice.

               “Hey, you new here?”

The sound of another human voice seemed almost alien in this white empty space. Seth glanced around the sign and saw someone approaching, with two very large basset hounds. They sniffed the ground and dragged their master forward. The man, who looked like an oily Santa Claus, was eyeing Seth with some curious distain.

               “Uh, yeah, we just pulled in.”

               “What’s your business here, mister?”

_Great fucking question_. “I’m looking up an old friend. Her, uh, cousin is sick and I need to tell her.”

               “Couldn’t’ve picked up the phone, could ya?”

It was about six hundred miles back that Seth’s patience for crotchety, nosy old men ran out. “Look, is there going to be a problem?”

The dogs paused, as if all three of them glaring would make him turn around. “No, no problem, unless you come here looking for a fight.”

Seth Gecko learned a long time ago that all the world’s language is money and that included Deliverance yuppies. “I’ve got a hundred bucks for you if you let me use a barn or something to keep my trailer in for a week. Another two if you keep quiet about it.”

The old man blinked and the dogs went back to sniffing. “Uh, yeah, I got somethin’ that might work for yuh. It’s off the side of the road, but nobody comes down that road much anywho.”

Seth took out his wallet. “One last thing, old timer, does the name _Muñeca_ mean anything to you?”

White hairs around his lips bristled as Seth handed over the money. The old man shook his head. “Nah, that name don’t mean much, I’m afraid.” He began to count his bribe. “But there is a moon-eeka diner downtown.”

               “What?” A pounding started behind Seth’s right eye.

The old man didn’t even look up. “Oh, yeah. M-u-n-e-c-a. Down off Main. Lady moved here a couple of years ago from way outta state, with her brother, and opened up shop. Serves the got-damn best flapjacks I ever had.”

               “Is it open now? What’s her name?”

He frowned at Seth, xenophobia beginning to creep back in despite the large wad of cash in his hands. “No. The place closes at one on the weekends. Not at lot of folks want flapjacks after eleven. But you might catch her at Danny’s pub. She goes in there after she closes, but she don’t talk much.”

Seth rubbed his eyes, a headache beginning. “I’ll throw in fifty bucks if you let me use your shower.”              

* * *

The key to the barn safely in his pocket, Seth closed the stable hand’s exit door behind him. The water inside the tin can that served as the outside shower during the summer was ice cold, but at least he no longer reeked of BO and Burger King. There was nothing to be done about the beard or hair now, but perhaps she wouldn’t vomit at the sight of him. Well, maybe she would, but for different reasons . . . hopefully.

Seth double-checked the lock before sliding his hood over his head. The sun was setting and a different kind of chill had set in. This kind was barreling, like a drill head, into his skin, freezing him from the inside out. The cold had been manageable, up until now. Seth let out a trembling breath and headed up the road, based on the directions of the suddenly very rich greasy codger.

True to his word, the town only had one main road, which was easy enough to follow. It seemed everyone had turned in early. Most of the store lights had been shut off, the upper apartments bearing the only warmth. Out of curiosity, he paused at the intersection of Main and Grey, looking down the street. The old man had said, at the end of the two streets was where “Moon-eka” Eatery was, but Seth couldn’t quite get a glimpse. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was a bad thing or not.

He went on.

He passed the post office. The general store. He passed a boarded up barber shop with a sinking feeling that this town was eerily similar to the thousands of faceless towns they had wandered together in Mexico, except about a bazillion times colder. Did she know that?

Seth rolled his eyes at himself and trudged forward, his hands stuck up under his pits for warmth. If she was even here . . .

He reached Danny’s bar just after sundown, when a wind picked up that had started to toss around unpacked snow. It was small, as most no-Starbucks town went. But it was warm and smelled like pretzels. Only a few patrons loitered, lazy and sleepy from a long day. There was chatter, but it was easy, unhurried, pleasant. One could slip in here and be lost without a care in the world.

Seth glanced around. Nobody registered his appearance, so as casually as he could, he slid into one of the tables on the far right. The lookout had a view of both the exits, the bar itself, and the bathrooms. If his ghost was coming back to haunt him, at least she wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him.

A bulky woman of about forty-five came up to him asked him what he wanted to drink. He replied just a beer and she came back with something that tasted like warm dirt. But at least there was alcohol in it.

An hour into sitting and Seth’s eyelids were drooping. To be sitting in something other than that god-awful pleather chair was a blessing, but also a curse, if he was meant to spot her after all these years. Maybe a ten-minute nap wouldn’t hurt . . . .

 The bar door swung open and flushed in the cold air, rousing him from the near clutches of sleep. But it was only another burly woman. Did they just come in boxes around here?

The woman was shedding layers as she approached the bar. Not so large after all, rather tiny, in fact . . .

The bar tender greeted her as she slid up onto a seat. She took off her hat, and dark hair spilled down onto her shoulders. She took off a large overcoat, the tips of her hands glowing pink out of fingerless gloves.

Seth’s heart was racing. He couldn’t see her face, damn it, her back to him.

He hadn’t really thought of this moment. Of what this meant. Of what it all meant. His palms were sweaty. His stomach churned.

A flash behind the bar caught his eye. He hadn’t noticed the mirror behind the rows of liquor bottles.

The woman settled, unwinding a scarf from her neck. She dropped it off to the seat next to her, looked up to the bartender, and smiled. Her Kate smile.

Kate Fuller was in his life, once again.

* * *

She sat there for an hour, drinking her beer slowly, and chatting occasionally with the people around her. But for the most part, they left her alone, and she seemed entirely at peace with that.

Unconsciously, Seth began to count the things he noticed that were different about her.

  1. Her hair was shorter. Just above her shoulders. It kept falling forward in front of her face in between conversations.
  2. Her nails were painted. Not sure what color.
  3. She wasn’t carrying a purse. But she did not hide the small 22 strapped to her hip.
  4. Kate Fuller was still carrying a gun. Why? What was she fighting?
  5. Her face was thinner. Her skin was tighter, her nose sharper. Her lips were a bright pink from the cold.



She still picked at the label of her beer bottle while she worked on it. There was a perfect little mound of white paper on the bar in front of her after an hour. Inside him, something ached painfully.

At eleven o’clock, she paid and began to redress. The waitress came over to him again, asking if he wanted something else, or another refill— he wasn’t entirely sure, there was a buzzing in his ears that was making everything difficult to hear. He shook his head, his eyes not leaving her back, as he paid and waited for her to leave before following her out.

She was a good few steps ahead, head down against the wind. Her arms were crossed in front of her. His mouth was dry and he was desperately trying to remember the few good opening lines he had thought of in the car. Of course, they were long gone from his panicking brain by now.

They passed under a few overhead lights, the sky entirely black by now, heading towards a blue Chevy truck. Seth’s shoe hit a patch of ice and the crunch shattered the silence.

Her hand snapped to her hip, and in a flash of bright black under the white streetlight, he was staring down the muzzle of that 22. A tight click echoed in the abandoned street and she breathed in – aiming, steading.

               “You have three seconds to go home, before I paint the ground with your stalker brains.” Suddenly, the ground to his left exploded and he jumped. Steam rolled into the dark sky, the barrel of the gun high. “Two now. Fuck off and leave me alone.”

               “Whoa, whoa, hey now, settle down there—,” Seth went to move his good hand up in surrender, but in the quick movement, his foot slipped. God, how he hated the cold. He was facing Kate Fuller with a runny nose and cracked lips. He sniffed and raised both hands fully. “C’mon, Katie-cakes, let’s talk.”

His hood was still up, his ears now painfully aching, and the bright light of the street light kept him as a silhouette. Her eyes narrowed, steeling, refusing to show weakness of surprise. Then, as though deciding, she set her jaw, uncocked the gun, and began to walk towards him.

               “That’s right. You’d always remember your old buddy—,”

CRACK. With the gun tight in her fist, she punched him in nose.

               “OW!” Seth stumbled and fell back. His hood sliding off his head, he landed in a patch of more dirt and asphalt than snow. Blood oozed out of his nose, covering his upper lip in wet blood and dried snot.

Kate Fuller stood above him, her hands clenched. “Seth Gecko. You look like shit.” She said his name like parents would warn their children about the boogeyman. “I thought you were dead.”  

               “Yeah, well, I get that more than you’d expect.” His hand was trembling as it went to clear his mouth of the dripping snot-blood. He couldn’t look up, couldn’t meet that face of final judgement. Half of him expected for her to smite him right there, and the other half wished she would. He didn’t move to get up.

It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t speaking, or yelling, at him for that matter. He could hear her breathing and nothing else. The ice was melting into his jeans and his left thigh was starting to go numb. The tingles were just beginning.

               “Look, I know this is a shock after –,”

               “How did you find me?”

It was wrong not to face her like a man. She deserved that at least. He drove over a thousand miles and the best he could do was grovel. _Get up, Gecko, Richie needs you._

Seth pushed himself up onto his elbows, the blood on his nose finally freezing, and lifted his eyes. Her short hair blew in the ice wind, cutting up under her chin. It was dark brown now, as though she had dyed it some time ago in an effort to hide. Her right knuckles were bruised, the rest of her palm hidden in thick fingerless gloves. The gun rested casually in her left hand like a protective dog would circle the ankles of its master. But of course, it was her face— it was her face that showed so much time had passed. In the darkly lit bar, he hadn’t seen— hadn’t looked for— the large scar stretching from the left side under her bottom lip, up through to just under her nose. It was a perfect line, made quickly in anguish, in anger. She had suffered under the blade of a sadist. Under the peeling light behind him, he saw just the small brands of laugh lines becoming harder, more permanent crows feet. Kate was twenty-five now. Aging.

Her mouth was a single line. And her eyes . . . they were simply impenetrable. Hard green permafrost in a white pale face. She looked exactly alike and nothing alike the girl he left alone.

Seth felt a rush of heat, a baseball bat cluttering around in his brain and making his stomach flip. He glanced down, his throat dry. He tasted blood on his tongue. This was a mistake.

               “I’ll ask you one more time. How did you find me?”

The gun flickered at her hip, baring its teeth.

All of this was a terrible mistake. He should never have come.

_Remember Richie. You’ve got him tied up in a fridge because if you don’t, he’s never going to be your brother again._ When he spoke, the words struggled, caught in the sandpaper of his cheeks.

               “There are rumors about Scott. That he’s cured of being a culebra. I just want that for Richie.”

The wind died down, and it seemed as though she had been turned to ice in that moment.

No. Not ice. Frozen steel.

               “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Scott died years ago. Go home. There’s nothing here for you.”

Kate stepped back into the darkness, the gun retreating into her pocket. She pulled out the keys to her truck.

The air suddenly grew unbearably cold, as though she drew back an incredible heat source. Seth lifted the hood up again over his prickling ears and rolled to his feet.

               “Kate, just hear me out. I wouldn’t have come all this way if it wasn’t for a damn good reason.” She was flipping through a keyring as though he wasn’t there. The wind blew again. “We ditched the snakes back in Mexico. It’s just Richie and me again . . . and I need your help.”

She unlocked the car door and with a tight pull, she yanked off the ice. Seth lunged forward, slamming the door shut. The gun clicked again and he felt an ice cold barrel pressed up against his stomach.

               “Step back or you’ll be losing half of your right lung.” Her green eyes held. Solid. There would be no sweet-talking to her. There would be no dancing around, or fooling her. There was no bullshit he could summon strong enough to blind her. That petulant, headstrong girl had turned into a hurricane of a woman.

Seth stepped back, hands raised. His white breath tumbled away into the night as the corners of his mouth burned. The gun was aimed right between his eyes. “Look, I just need five minutes. It’s Richie, Kate. He’s messed up, bad, and the word in the shitty underbelly of Culebra Mexico is _La Muñeca_ has the answers.”

With a sudden awareness that hit him like a mac truck, across the jet black slide of the gun, he was staring directly into her eyes. No longer did Seth Gecko tower over Kate Fuller.

               “And what? I’m _La Muñeca_?” Her voice cracked as sharply as the gun in her hand.

               “All I’m saying is that you’re part of their mythos now. Whether they know it or not.”

Those dark eyes narrowed again, her body nearly going flat against the truck. “How did you know? How did you know where to find me?”

Seth swallowed. “I followed the stories, alright? The snake-heads are cold-blooded. They won’t follow you here. But I had to.”

               “For Richie?”

She still hadn’t lowered the gun. Seth nodded, his hands still raised. “I know I’m the last person you ever wanted to see. But he’s my brother and he’s in trouble.”

Silence folded around them, gripping them both in place more tightly than any frost bite. She adjusted her grip.

               “You know I don’t trust you.”

Weighted darkness.

               “This isn’t for me. I’m asking from one sibling to another . . . Help us.”

She was searching him for any hint of a lie. The nose of the gun thrust forward, sensitive to the smell of blood and filthy, back-stabbing, disloyal thieves, it traveled slowly from between his eyes, down his throat, pausing at his heart, all the way down his rib cage and settled for uncomfortably long on his crotch. Kate Fuller, resident of Bear Claw, Alaska, unlocked the hammer and, for a second time that night, decided not to shoot him.

               “Three things are going to happen,” she said as she crossed her arms. “One, you are going to walk at least one step ahead of me at all times. Two, we’re going into that bar, we’re sitting down and you’re going to tell me everything— what’s happened to Richie, how you found me, and why you think I can help you. For your own safety, you should know every man and woman in that bar is fully armed at every minute of the day.” The dark eyes flashed again. “And three, you are going to swear to me the second you’ve gotten what you’ve come for, you’re going to put this town and me in your rearview mirror, and never come back. Swear to me.”

The wind whistled and Seth hardened himself against a shiver from the cold. A broken laugh spilled from the swinging wooden door as a couple left the bar, giggling into each other’s arms.

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Kate—,”

               “Swear to me, Seth, that you’ll leave me alone.”

Slowly, one hand dropped from beside his head, and extended forward, hidden in a gray glove. “I swear.”

* * *

_Six Hours After The Fall of The Twister_

The longer they drove, the darker the sky grew. Somewhere in the white space of her brain, she could feel the blood on her face drying and caking and cracking with the thick dust flying in over the open window. There was a burning somewhere, on her skin— her face was warm— and she wondered if she had sunburn. Her mother’s voice said, of course she did. Driving under a bright sun for hours would do that to a person.

Above her, in the purple bruised rolling clouds ahead, lighting cracked and the air changed and everything was heavy and dry. The car raced forward over sand and dirt, ignoring the lightning, its wheels furiously carving out an escape from a bloodbath that had stolen everything from two perfect strangers. Kate caught a glimpse of her face in the side mirror.

Occasionally, her church would host PSTD support meetings after hours. At nine, she wandered too deeply into the church one night after youth group, and the fear she saw on grown men had made her cry. She could feel her heart rattling in her chest, as if that was the only thing she had left within her. She was alive only because her heart was still stubbornly beating. It wasn’t fear on her face. It was just . . . emptiness.

The sky cracked and suddenly like the floodgates opening, their dusty convertible was suddenly berated with a torrential downpour.

It was only then that the car dropped its ninety mile an hour drive, down to sixty-five, forty, twenty, and off to the side of the road, just before the dirt had become mud. It was warm, the rain, as it thundered down her face, her nose, her shoulders. Her jeans were soggy now. She could hear the drip, drip, drip as water rolled off the dashboard onto her dirty sneakers. The dried blood dislodged itself in chunks from her pink skin like a landslide. Kate watched as the rain turned red as it slid off her and stained the black seat.          

“Oh.” She murmured. His beautiful convertible. Stained. Forever. She looked up from watching the stain seep through the fabric to her stranger. The man who was suddenly intertwined with her fate in a way that was almost laughable.

The rain was clearing his face of blood, his white collared shirt faded dark with mud. He was staring ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel as if he were still driving furiously into the night. Fat brown droplets rolled off his long eyelashes and dribbled down his chin. He blinked when she said his name.

               “Seth.” He swallowed and sat back. “Seth, the interior— it’s ruined. We got blood all over it.”

He turned his head to finally look at her and he did show fear. Horror even. As if every terrible thought he had kept at bay the past six hours of driving was suddenly crashing down on him. Drowning him in his black convertible as warm rain soaked both him and the girl he was now responsible for.

               “Seth, we should find a hotel.”

He swallowed, as if to say something, but nothing came out. He tried again. “How much money do you have on you?”

She was suddenly dizzy. “I-I-I left my wallet . . . back in the RV.”

Seth took out his wallet and counted, the money immediately drenched. She wondered if he had heard her over the downpour.

               “There’s enough for a night or so. Food too. But then—,” he stopped. The rain drowned out whatever he said next.

               “We’ll figure something out.”

He looked over at her as if seeing her for the first time.

* * *

A purple light was bleeding across a metal gray sky and Douglas fir trees peppered the immersion. It was nearing dawn and Seth watched the sky break into morning from the passenger’s side of Kate’s pickup truck. The bite of cold had receded, the heater on full blast, and they sped along a frosted road, heading east from Bear Claw. The bar closed at two and her expression hadn’t changed once as Seth relayed the last year and a half of their lives. Starting from the job, to Richie getting bit, the terrible changes, and of course, the murder— her expression didn’t change when he said Richie had nearly killed a kid. She just drank another long sip of beer and asked him to continue. He told her about asking the professor for help, about how they found out about Devorador, and the felidaes _— those fuckers_ — and how he knew where to find _La Muñeca_.

She was still silent.

They sat outside in her car for another two hours, Seth finishing his story, before Kate Fuller uncrossed her arms, inserted the key, and ignited the engine. They had been driving in silence ever sense.

Both hands, the good and the bad, felt odd sitting at his side. He was always the driver, always the get-away car back in the days of the Brothers Geckos. The adrenaline from a job would shoot like electricity into his spine and he could never keep his hands still. Driving at break-neck speeds eased it, made him focus on something, made him realize how much money they had just gotten away with.

The jitters took him again and he bounced his knee like a bratty kid. Again, he had stolen something and gotten away with it. But now, it was infinitely less gratifying.

               “So then this means you believe me? If we’re going back to basecamp?”

He looked over at her, not entirely expecting a response. She was leaning away from him, her left elbow resting against the window with the back of her pale fingers pressed up against her lips. Her brow was furrowed in thought, making the scar on her lip ever more prominent. The engine revved as she sped forward through the faded gray morning.

               “It means I’m looking out for my best interests. If you can find me, someone else can.”

She jerked left and the truck veered of the main road, the only road in Bear Claw. A small field stretched in front of them, and at the end, stood a thick forest. Without pausing, Kate gunned the engine and they lurched between two trees— two trees far too close together for Seth’s comfort.

               “Jesus Christ . . .” he muttered as the cab bounced forcefully, the tires no longer on paved road.  “Does your best interests include taking me out to the woods and shooting me?”

Kate shrugged. “I considered it.” The cab rattled again as they crossed what could technically be classified as a small wooden bridge. “If I don’t cut a path, makes home harder to find. During the winter, I leave the truck two exits down at in a shed. We’re not far.”

               “ _This_ isn’t winter?” Seth scoffed and grabbed the handle attached to the roof.

Kate chuckled darkly. “Just go back to Mexico. El Rey, the arms of a beautiful woman, and all that. It’s what you’re good at.”

The engine revved again as they burst through the tree line. Here, the tall weeds had been hacked down and the land flattened out into an incredible golden sprawl. The morning rays set the dying spear grass ablaze with a soft but persisting light. Small patches of snow sprinkled the land like dropped and forgotten ice cream cones, splattered on a board walk. Only to a good eye was there a visible path, the grass beaten down over time and time again. In the distance, between two fat fir trees, there sat a brick home, with an adjacent structure nearby. Yellow lights danced behind white lace curtains. Hot smoke plumed from its slightly lopsided chimney. Someone was home.

Seth glanced at the woman next to him. She was leaning forward as though her body would go through the door before the truck even pulled up. But her eyes looked far into the distance. Seth swallowed the apology sliding up against the back of his teeth.

The truck grumbled and huffed as it pulled up to the wide building with a sliding door, clearly her garage. Kate cut the engine and sat back, the keys clutched in her palms.

Immediately, the cold began to seep in, free of the barrier of warmth the heater had provided. His toes began to tingle.

She sighed.

“Before we go any further, I need to say some things. You’re a goddamn idiot.” He opened his mouth, but she thundered straight on. “You’re a goddamn fucking idiot for coming out here to Alaska wearing Nike shoes. You’re a _goddamn asshole, fucking moron idiot_ for driving from Mexico to Alaska to try and save your fucked-up brother. I don’t want you here, Seth. You’ve jeopardized everything I’ve been trying to build these past five years. Every time you come into my life, you ruin _everything_. You ruin everything you touch and I refuse to be your victim any more. I’m trying to be my own person.”

His stomach clenched. She was right. She was always right.

               “I’m twenty-five years old and for the first time in my life, I’m trying to be my own person. Not what my mother wanted to me to be. Not what my dad wanted—,” her voice cut and Seth didn’t have the balls to see if she was crying. When she spoke, her voice was even. “This town means something to me. I’ve carved out something resembling an existence but whatever it is, it’s mine. Not a preacher’s daughter, not bait for a ritual sacrifice, not the partner to a rogue, broken cowboy—,”

At that, she stopped and her forward gaze softened, invisibly rifling through old memories. As though she remembered those years— perhaps even him— fondly and not like the hell-infested nightmares that they were. Seth swallowed, the right finger bone beginning to ache, just as it always had when he stopped to think about those two years. Yeah, maybe, there were good times. He thought of long roads on Mexican dirt, of infectious sunlight, of stars and tequila and scaring jackrabbits— yes, to him, there were good times.

               “But I’m not doing this for you. I’m not even doing it for Richie. I – I don’t know why I’m doing this. You have no idea what you’re asking . . . I—I don’t even know if it’s really possible . . . This is stupid a-and I—,” Kate took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead with her unbruised knuckle, words failing her once again. “And just for the record, I’ve never forgotten what you said to me that night . . . when we parted ways.”

His palm ached righteously now.

               “But that’s not me anymore. I don’t need _you_ anymore. When I left, I didn’t just play in the darkness. I got swallowed by it. But you, what happened in Mexico, the darkness, everything— it got me here. And here . . . I’m happy.”

Dawn had officially broken through the balustrade of the grey metal clouds, in great sweeping swaths. The two fir trees were illuminated by a fantastic glow. A sheet of golden light poured down on the brick home and inside someone began to move. Kate glanced at the front door, waiting.

               “Seth, what you’re about to see is something you can never talk about. You cannot tell anyone. Because if you do, they will come for me and everything here, everything I’ve worked so hard for, will be gone. And I . . . I won’t recover.”

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He followed her gaze to the small home. The smudged wooden door moved, and then the screen creaked on its hinges as it moved backwards, into the cold morning. A young man with long black hair tied at the nape of his neck came towards her truck. Seth swallowed. A dark beard lined his face, but the young man’s right eye was marred— grey and impassible . . . And yet, it was unmistakable. Scott Fuller walked out of that little house in Bear Claw, Alaska and into the crisp bright light.

He was human.

His denim collar brushed up high against the weak wind, he paused. “Mornin’, sis.”

* * *

By minute ten of their fighting, Seth was fairly certain that he had lost three toes to frost bite. Kate had made him wait in the car while she and Scott talked about temporary housing arrangements. Half a minute later Scott returned with a blanket and a single message: “she’s pissed.”

Muted by undoubtedly thick walls, their argument was only illuminated by muffled shouts and pots clanking, as though someone hurled a stack of dishes into the sink. If she was cleaning and arguing then all hell was breaking loose, possibly literally. He would have chuckled to himself, but there was a large chance his mouth had frozen shut. To come all this way, just to become a popsicle in Kate Fuller’s dingy pickup— he had imagined other ways than going out in a blaze of glory.

A moment later, the screen door popped back again, and Seth lifted his head off the back of the seat. Scott was coming towards him, a duffel on one shoulder and a thick paper bag in his opposite hand. He was shaking his head.

               “You awake in there?” He hollered.

Seth nodded numbly. “I get it that this place is supposed to be backwater, but please tell me someone’s invented fire around here.”

               “Seth Gecko, the comedian.” Scott nudged with his jaw towards the garage. “C’mon, let’s get you set up.”

Surprisingly, his fingers didn’t crack off as he unlocked the truck door and followed the younger Fuller around to the side door of the metal structure near the Fuller house. With a large key, he went through, Seth dragging the blanket around his shoulders like a lame cape. The garage was large enough for at least two cars, absolutely a large van. A converted farmhouse, the ground was littered with straw and salt, its high vaulted ceiling supported by crisscrossing wooden beams. However, what had been the hale storage had been converted to what looked to be an enclosed loft. High enough above the open space for potentially parked cars, the walls were sealed off with a locked door at the top of a wooden staircase.

Scott jangling the keys again, he led the way up the stairs and cracked open the thick door. He stepped aside and moved to let Seth in.

There was a bed in the far left corner, pressed length ways against the far wall. Against the opposite wall, there was a small wood fire stove, with some meager cabinets above it. The majority of front of the room was covered by a thick, braided rug, either as an attempt at decoration or additional warmth, it was unclear. Facing the stove, a thread-bare couch was accented with a stack of books and an end table with a white lamp. A white basin and pitcher accompanied a mounted mirror to the left of small window facing the bed.

               “Some of the local kids run into trouble every once in a while. I built this place to give them a place to crash. It’s yours ‘till you don’t need it.”

There were a stack of thick blankets sitting at the edge of the bed and Seth eyed them as casually as he could.

               “So if it’s good for a bunch of pot-smoking punks, it’s good enough for me?” Seth shuffled in and Scott closed the door behind him.

               “That’s what Kate said.”

Seth pretended to be eyeing out the far window. “Did she? Is that’s what you two were, uh, arguing about?”

               “She got testy when I said you would be staying for more than a day.”

               “Did you now? And how did you convince her of that?” Seth frowned and turned around, still clutching the blanket to his shoulders. “No, wait, better question, _why_? Why would you help me?”

Fuller was hunched down, slowly throwing wood chips into the bottom of the stove from a metal pail. He took the top of a newspaper, set it ablaze with the flick of his pocket lighter, and tossed it into the stove. Closing the door, he stood up to his full height, now a man. He stuffed his hands into his front pockets, and pointed to the duffel bag and the sack he brought.

               “There’s a change of clothes, should be warmer. In the brown one, breakfast. Have at it.”

               “What’s with the eye?”

Scott shrugged. “Lost it in a bet. Long story.”

He turned to go, but Seth shuffled forward.

               “Hey, c’mon, man, fess up. You don’t have jackshit to say about your favorite Gecko suddenly showing up after five years of radio silence?”

Fuller shrugged. “I trust Kate . . .  and if you’re in trouble, the least we can do is give you a better place to sleep than the basement.”

Seth narrowed his eyes. “You know, way back when, you were a bit less of Xanaxed weirdo, and more pissed-off, fuck-everybody weirdo. What gives? Yoga? Geo-caching? Big bag of weed?”

               “What can I say? That stuff about turn the other cheek, I’m kind of into it.”

Seth raised his eyebrows and adjusted his cape blanket.

               “Are you telling me, after _everything_ — being kidnapped by goddamn bank-robbers, you becoming a snake-face, your dad murdered— you’re still all about the man-of-the-Cloth-Praise-the-Lord-Halleluiah absolute _bullshit_?”

Scott sighed and flopped down on the couch, his eyes trailing out the window Seth had been blocking. “First of all, I’m not going to get into this with you because, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you wouldn’t understand. There’s a lot you don’t understand. But, in short, yes . . . but’s not the same as it was. Before, He was supposed to be the answer to everything. Now, He’s more of a side-line coach, inspiring the team.”

               “But not leading the charge, huh?”

Scott glanced back at Seth, his eyes unreadable as his sister’s. However, the soft set of his jaw described more compassion than simmering rage. There was something he wanted to say, but instead, he simply nodded slowly. “It’s just . . . different . . . There’s food in the ice boxes under the floorboards downstairs and we go out to Cosco in the town over every Thursday. Under the bed, there’s some actual winter clothes because clearly you don’t know how to pack for anything but a beach front property. The pipes are connected to the house, so we have a guest bathroom around back. You can let yourself in to wash your clothes— I just don’t recommend it when Kate’s home. I’ll talk to her tonight at dinner about what to do about Richie’s condition. You’re welcome to come.”

He stood and tossed Seth the keys, moving for the door.

               “So it’s really you in there?”

Scott froze and glanced back over his shoulder.

               “What does that even mean?”

               “You know damn well what it means. Are you really—?”

               “No longer a creature of the night? Do I thirst for innocent blood? No. Can I run around in the sunlight without becoming crispy bacon? Yeah.” Scott swallowed and for the first time, that air of relaxed patience faded. He scratched his beard anxiously. “What Kate did for me . . . how she brought me back . . . it’s a story. And one that’s not totally mine to tell. My sister, she’s the only thing I have in this world and frankly, I don’t think I deserve her. She’s been through hell and somehow she dragged my ass back out. So, yeah, it’s really me. But I don’t know if that woman down there is the girl you left in a sleazy motel room.”

So . . . she did talk to him about it.

               “No, Scott, it probably isn’t.” The keys jingling in his fingers caught a flash of bright light from the outside and Seth looked up through the window. Smoke poured grey into the sky from the chimney, and somewhere, beyond those curtains, Kate was making pancakes because that’s what she did when she was angry in the morning. Or, at least, that’s what she used to do when she was angry in the morning. “And for what’s coming, that’s probably the best thing for her.”

               “I don’t know what’s best for her anymore.”

Seth looked back to Scott and momentarily caught a glimpse of a younger, more fearful Scott. One who stood in his father’s arms as two bank robbers took them prisoner in a dingy motel. And then like dripping mud, the adult Fuller was built up once again and he glanced at Seth.

               “You’re staying here because I believe in second chances. For you to come all the way out of the ass-crack of Mexico, I don’t think you’re here just to fuck up our lives. You need help and like the good Samaritans we were raised to be, you will be fed, clothed, and housed. After dinner, we’ll go check out Richie and bring him to the barn. At least then, we’ll know if you’re telling the truth.”

               “Scott, I swear I am—,”

The other man raised his hands, shaking that shaggy head. “Hey, I’m not the one you need to convince. But it is for everyone’s best interest if you get your business done here, and leave.”

Seth scowled. “The Fuller house is just full of love for extended family . . .”

               “We’re fearful of strangers, Seth.” Scott Fuller, the adult, like his sister, was a force to be reckoned.

Seth swallowed. “Fair enough.”

Scott nodded to the cabinet. “There’s a spoon and some canned peach jars if you’re still hungry. Dinner will be ready at seven.” Then he turned and left the loft.

The freezing landscape was silent.

At least in Mexico, there were crickets.

The woodchips crackled, tumbling over one another and for the first time since the Canadian border, Seth Gecko was warm.

_Bear Claw, Alaska— Jesus fucking Christ— why did it have to be fucking Alaska?_

* * *

Seth woke with a start to a half-dark room. The purple sky was heavy and swollen with dusk, the wood fire stove turning his small loft into a foggy soup. He stumbled out of bed, panting, fighting with the blanket that had wound itself between his legs while he slept, and collapsed in front of the window. The heat making his head hurt, Seth scrambled to his knees, the ice cold air an inch from his nose on the other side of the pane. With one sweaty hand, he pushed the window open and gasped in the crackling air. It brushed against his face like a slosh of water and he drank it in. The blanket finally fell to the floor as he braced with both hands on the side of the windowsill. He could feel his skin solidifying, sweat turning into bone and tissue once again.

He looked out the small window, into the wide field they had driven in on. The sun had fallen, knocking a brilliant shock of lavender and pink across the Alaskan sky. The circle of trees that enclosed their field was slowly melting into staggered shadows, outlines of firs and pines, like models instead of the real thing. Somewhere in the black molds, an owl began its first call of the night.

He was no longer panting.

Seth looked at the clock on the end table with the white lamp. 6:17.

Swallowing, he shut the window and went to see how exactly to dress for the frigid cold.

* * *

A giant plaid coat wrapped up tightly around his torso and beard slightly trimmed (thanks to the clippers under the basin cabinet), Seth trudged down the wooden stairs and across the twenty feet from the garage to the Fuller home. At precisely 6:58, he knocked on the white door. The house itself seemed to freeze in surprise.

A familiar shaggy head appeared on the other side of the screen door and Scott smiled.

               “Hey, man, glad you could make it.”

Seth narrowed his eyes as he walked through the open door and into the small house. “Yeah, and a monkey’s my uncle.”

               “Shoes off. They track salt everywhere.”

The door opened up to a narrow hallway, expanding left and right. To the right was a meager living room, with a long, wrapping green leather sofa pointed at a small television with two large book shelves lining the walls on other side. A stone fireplace rose up to the far right of the television, centering the room. A sliding glass door led to a dark porch outside, and the hallway darkened as it went on, most likely leading to the bathroom and bedrooms. To Seth’s left a kitchen and dining room opened up. A dark wooden table, already set for a meal, with dark wooden chairs, stood only a few feet from a cream-tiled kitchen with a yellow backsplash. The entire house smelled of warm bread.

Kate, in jeans and a loose grey sweater, was pouring wine as the two men came in. She didn’t speak a single word as she put two filled glasses on the table, and sat down at the head of the table, her own glass waiting by her empty plate. Scott casually slid into the seat to the right of his sister, but Seth felt outrageous without his shoes. Grey socks, really?

               “It’s a recipe from our grandma,” Scott said, his voice sounding like a foghorn in the deafening silence. He gestured at the red stone ware sitting in the center of the table, among fresh bread and a mash up of squash and carrots. “C’mon, try a bit.” Without preamble, Scott began shoveling a little bit of everything onto his plate.

Kate was leaning forward with her chin resting on two clasped hands. Her eyes flickered up to him, as if challenging him to get within hitting distance. “Yeah, c’mon, sit.”

Not even Richie ever looked so much as a snake about to strike. And, all things considered, if she was going to smack him again, he most likely deserved it. Seth slipped off his outer jacket, dropped it on a hook, and sat down.

Her knife was dangerously close.

               “Here, I’ll get you started.” Scott reached forward and topped off Seth’s plate with some of the most deliciously-smelling creations he ever encountered. “Chicken casserole,” Scott continued. “We don’t have a lot of options out here, especially during the winter. So eat up, man, you’re not going to see carrots for a while.”

The words escaped his mouth before he could stop them. “What, no saying Grace?”

Scott froze and immediately glanced at Kate. Seth had meant it entirely as a joke, but Scott’s reaction was something more akin to a deer realizing it was in the sights of a hunter’s gun. But Kate did not pause in twisting the glass’s stem between her fingers. Scott put down the serving spoon and moved to touch her, but Kate spoke first.

“No. Not anymore.” She leaned forward and took the spoon to serve herself. “Eat up.”

Seth looked at Scott, who moved his head in a fraction of an inch back and forth. _Don’t go there_. But when did Seth Gecko ever listen to advice. “Why?”

Kate finished chewing, swallowed, and lifted her eyes to Seth.

“Penance,” she replied and took another bite.

Scott’s glare was one of parental disapproval.

It certainly wasn’t Scott, nor Kate’s unhelpful monosyllabic responses, but Seth felt a tug from his gut all the way up to his mouth, and it tied itself shut. Scott was still watching his sister for any more lit fuses. She rolled her eyes and gestured to the food in front of them. “Eat! Or it’s going to get cold.”

Scott tossed Seth one more rueful glares before going back to eat. Seth looked down at the plate in front of him. She had moved a bit past pancakes and Totino’s pizza rolls. Seth pulled at the casserole, slid up a big, cheesy chicken bite onto his fork, and tasted dear old Grandma Fuller’s famous recipe.

Oh God, _so much better_ than pizza rolls.

               “Holy shit. Seth, your hand.”

Seth paused and saw Scott staring horrified at his mangled right hand. Kate had stopped eating too. Sometimes, he too easily forgot about that misfire. He put down his fork and gazed at his gun hand. The broken bones in his palm that never healed properly. The missing pinkie tip. The melted finger nails.

He was fully aware of Scott’s pitying gaze, but that same string in his gut turned to his head to Kate. Her scar shone brightly with her lips pursed the way they were. Vague concern? That was new.

               “Dude, what happened?”

Seth looked into her dark green eyes and thought of the forest they came rumbling through to get out of Bear Claw. A tunneling forest. With bending trees at impossible heights.

               “Penance,” he said.

 


	2. Who Art in Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should update the tags because it's like "strangers to friends to lovers . . . then to enemies, Strangers?, friendslovers" that's how this fic will go. I've sprinkled in some flashbacks to show what happened over the two years they were in Mexico. Mostly an opportunity for me to explore more side moments. It was fun regardless. Hope you like it! Please comment if you do :) Fingers cross we all survive the finale tonight!
> 
> Also potential trigger warning: near non-consensual attack

**Chapter Two: Who Art in Heaven**

_Four Months After_

                “ _Jesus fucking Christ_ — OW!”

               “Well, stop moving! It just goes deeper every time you flinch!”

Seth ground his teeth together, his fists white-knuckled, hissing as she tried to remove the third shard of glass from his torn elbow. The bathroom towel they had spread down on the mattress was covered in blood and Seth was losing more by the minute. Kate hovered nearby, using a small pair of tweezers from the motel sewing kit she borrowed two days ago to repair a hole in her jeans. She pulled on the most visible shard and he twitched, fresh blood oozing from the open wound.

               “Okay, stop, stop, stop—,” he muttered. Seth leaned back on the bed with his good elbow, pale and looking like he was about to get sick. “We gotta rethink this.”

Kate, burrowing her own wave of nausea from the sight of blood and ripped skin, stood up from her knees, frowning. “We can’t leave them in there.”

“Right, right, just give me a minute.” He swallowed and stared at the ceiling. Sure, he had been knocked down and beaten before, but this— something had to be pressing on a nerve. Seth glanced at his leaking elbow then closed his eyes. “That is the last time you get to go to a bar, day or night.”

Beneath the smear of blood on her chest and face from helping him up, Kate colored hotly. “First of all, we hadn’t seen a culebra in months and it wasn’t like there was a sign out on the door. Secondly, nobody asked you to pick a fight with the biggest one there.”

               “He was eyeing you funny,” he murmured, his eyes still closed. His brow furrowed as though something about his own words upset him. “I thought he maybe recognized you and I didn’t want him tipping off the rest of gang. How was I supposed to know he could throw me through a goddamn window with one hand?”

Kate shook her head and knelt down again. The bleeding had slowed and it was easier to differentiate between shard and bone. “We’re lucky to be alive,” she almost whispered.

At that, Seth grinned his stupid grin, peaking at her from one barely-open eye. “But we are, aren’t we, princess?”

Kate huffed, the color flushing into her cheeks again, and went to the small liquor cabinet. She reached in and took out the bottle of tequila they had been saving for what Seth affectionately termed, “Thanks-for-hell-giving.”

She returned to his side and thrust the bottle forward. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but drink.”

Seth eyed the bottle. “I don’t think now is the time for body shots—,”

She rolled her eyes again. “You keep squirming every time I get near you with the tweezers. If you ever want to regain use of your elbow, I have to get the glass out and then sew you up.” She took off her outer shirt, the front of her tank top smeared with blood (again). She took a loose hair tie and swung her hair up and out of her face.

               “Since when did you go to medical school?”

She turned from the window, her hands still in her hair, and caught eyes with Seth. There was worry there, fear maybe, and something else. Kate shrugged.

               “I’ve sewn up Mama’s dresses a hundred times before. It’s the same principle, right?”

Seth’s derisive snort turned into a grimace of pain. Her heart pinched, but she reached over and took the room key and a wad of cash. She stuffed his gun into the back waistband of her jeans.

               “Where are you going?”

               “You haven’t eaten anything but pizza and pizza rolls since yesterday. There’s a strip mall down the street. When you wake up, hopefully, you’ll be hungover but on the mend. Plus, at this point, I’m actually kind of curious what kind of pain meds you can buy over the counter in nowhere Mexico.”

               “So you’re just _hoping_ I don’t bleed out at this point?”

               “You’re so dramatic.” Kate grabbed the keys and gave him one last look. Truth be told, he looked like shit. “It’s stopped bleeding. When I get back, I want you drunk as a skunk.”

Quite pleasantly enough, when she did return, arms full of pain killers, bandages, a box of gloves, disinfectant, and a bag of what could pass as real food from a small _tienda_ , he was passed out, eagle-spread on the mattress, the empty bottle of tequila swinging dangerously between his two fingers. He was snoring slightly, his lips parted, his eyelids still of any bad dreams. It was probably the best sleep he had gotten in months, Kate thought sadly.

She dropped the bags on the table, and went to set out her tools. From the sewing kit, she took out the thickest thread she could find, threaded it through too large of a needle, and dipped it in the disinfectant. She laid both out on one of the few remaining clean towels. Then she cleaned the tweezers as well, placing them next to her needle. She took the bottle from Seth’s fingers and put it out of the way. She brought over her makeshift surgical kit to the side of the bed before running to the bathroom to wash her hand as best she could. Lastly, she took out the box of plastic gloves and found them at least to be a size too big for her tiny hands. With a slow breath, she rolled an unconscious Seth onto his side, a feat much more difficult than anticipated. She was red and panting slightly. It would have been easier to move boulders than his deadweight muscle.

She cleaned away as much dried blood as possible, and set to work.

It turned out there were only a couple more shards embedded in his skin. Fortunately, they were manageable with some band-aids and a watchful eye. What was more pressing was the jagged line curving from just above his left elbow, down to the back third of his forearm.

               “Seth?” She asked quietly. Whatever she was about to do was going to hurt, a lot, and she didn’t want him coming out of it halfway through.

He didn’t even respond.

Her heart tight in her throat, Kate leaned forward, pinching the skin like she would hold two pieces of fabric together. The needle went through too cleanly, the act somehow absurd, because this was _his flesh_ — it shouldn’t be so easily torn. Not Seth’s. Not his dark, warm skin that was rough on his hands and soft on his neck. Kate paused, glancing up to the pulse point on his throat. His broad chest rose and fell, albeit slowly. Kate closed her eyes momentarily against terrible thoughts, and went back to the needle.

When she started it was early afternoon, and when the last stitch had been set, the sun had set and dusk had fallen. Kate sat back on her heels, sweating more vigorously now. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, examining her work. Twenty stitches in total. She counted every one. Outside, the night glowed purple and the cicadas were screaming.

Kate stood and dropped her too big gloves in the trash. Her hands were shaking from exhaustion and her back cramped. She took the tweezers and needle back into the bathroom, washed them off, and let them dry on the counter. She gathered as many of the bloody towels as possible and tossed them in a pile near the door. There were a lot. She frowned. Maybe they would just have to quietly dispose of those in the large garbage bin before heading to the next hotel.

Behind her, Seth grumbled something and rolled onto his back, his head dropping to the left to face her.

She never looked this long when he was awake.

Is this what their lives had become? A never-ending road trip, pocketed by moments of blood and gore and pain, moving erratically on whim or when money was tight. She yearned, more than anything, for a snap in the monotony. She wasn’t bored, merely restless . . . and terrified to be without him for too long. She hated the fact that at eighteen, she had only traded one overbearing caretaker for another. But, this one was a dangerous, beautiful thing, and he cared about her without ever saying it. But as he said, they were the only two people left in the world, for what counted. Each day, her feelings about that swayed, one end to the next, terrified and nearly panicked, to a warm sensation that she couldn’t name without being first washed out by embarrassment and shame.

Kate made them both peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a half of an apple on the side. She put his plate with a bottle of Topo Chico on the bedside table and climbed into bed next to him. She grabbed the remote and switched the channel to some Mexican game show she found a couple of days ago in Monterrey. Her hair loose around her shoulders, she snacked for the next hour and sipped her own bottle, watching him occasionally out of the corner of her eye. The next episode was about to start when a warm hand grabbed her ankle out of the blue. Kate nearly yelped, and his eyes fluttered slightly open.

               “Kate.” Her name came out heavy, as though his mouth was dry. She tabled her plate and took up the open bottle of water.

               “I’m here. How do you feel?” She came and sat near his hip. His lips were chapped and his eyes couldn’t focus on anything. She reached forward and cupped the back of his head gently, bringing the water to him. “Can you drink this?”

He complied without responding. She made him drink several sips before putting his head down again. “Are you in pain? Can you eat anything?”

His large hand lifted from the sheet and drifted onto her bent knee. He slid his hand forward, thumb resting near her hip. “My arm hurts like a bitch.”

Kate swallowed, unsure if he was totally aware of where his hand was placed, but nodded. His eyes were still half-closed. “That’s to be expected.” She took two large pain pills off the bedside table and put them in his palm. “Take these. They’ll help.”

He slipped them back without thinking, and reaffirmed his hand on the inside of her thigh.

               “Do you want to eat anything? I promise it’s not pizza.”

He shook his head slowly, jaw set against the fuzzy pain.

Kate tucked a strip of hair behind her ear and, very slowly, picked up his warm hand and threaded their fingers together. She squeezed in what possibly could have passed for a comforting gesture, but Seth murmured something in audible.

               “What was that?”

               “Don’ want food,” he repeated, slightly louder. He opened his eyes, everything about his face warm, and he looked into her. Looked through her. It didn’t matter. He looked at her in a way that made her feel tiny and expansive at the same time. “Would you stay . . . with me?”

Kate glanced to the other bed, one that Sober Seth was always very careful to ask for when renting the dozens of rooms they passed through.

She wondered what of this he would remember. There was a sad jolt when she considered that he might not remember any of it. She reached forward and delicately touched his cheek.

               “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Seth. You need your rest and your arm has to heal, okay?”

He nodded dumbly, probably not even remembering the question he asked. Kate stood and he rolled away from her. There was a flash of silver and she realized he was still in his jeans, belt buckle poking into his hips.

Whenever she was sick, her mother had always made sure she was comfortable.

Kate shook her head. Now, _that_ was a bad idea. She put a pillow under his head and prayed for his anger, a little bit of pain, nothing of this softness, in the morning.

* * *

               “So, what? You paid a guy to let you put your ‘empty’ trailer in a shed for a few days and hoped nobody would peak inside?”

               “That was the plan.”

Scott scoffed. “You do realize this town as a population of, like, seventy people, right? Word kinda gets around . . .  especially when newbies roll through.”

               “Well, I feel sorry for the poor sucker who got a bad case of curiosity,” Seth replied, scowling. “What I’ve got locked up in there ain’t no surprise party.”

Scott nodded and rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans, and tried to adjust his seat . . . which was a very difficult thing to do when the small truck cab was lined three across with grown adults. Kate was again leaning away as far as she could, but this time perhaps out of necessity than ill-disguised disgust. Seth sat, crossed-armed, pressed up against the right door. Scott was the only one who seemed at ease. Seth was taking them out the way he had come in— right up to where Richie was hopefully still unconscious.

               “And what is exactly we’re going to find?” Scott continued, albeit hesitantly.

Scott scowled. “We’re going to find my brother. Whatever’s got him right now is just temporary. Which is why these—,” Seth gestured to the guns in a bag between his feet, “—are fucking unnecessary.”

He threw a glare to Kate through Scott, and caught her eyeing him angrily back. “Can you even shoot, with your . . . eye?”

               “We’re just being cautious, Seth. And yes, I can.” Scott tried to reason. “From what you say, we just don’t want anything to get out of control.”

               “It’s not going to.” Seth inched further to the right, his arms still crossed, and a clasp on his jeans dug sharply into his hip. “It’s Richie, for Christ’s sake. . . we’re going to be fine.”

The thickness of the settling dark only allowed for the truck’s headlamps to carve out only few feet of visible road ahead. As they drove south out of town, it began to snow.

               “Hey— first snow of the season!” Scott leaned forward to try and look up into the sky. “That’s cool that you’re here for this.”

Seth glowered at him.

Then he saw an abandoned tractor that he recognized. “Hey, it’s coming up. On your right.”

Kate slowed down, and in a moment, the yellow headlights fell on the back of a dark paneled shed.

               “Isn’t this where the Marshall family put their grain house before they left last year?” Scott asked, glancing at Kate. She nodded, the frown returning. She switched off the car and the entire world fell into blackness.

               “Seth, there’s some flashlights in the bag.” Was her voice suddenly husky or just his imagination?”

He dug in, felt around, and found three long, black flashlights, handing them each out. Kate opened the door and they all spilled into the fresh snow. Kate’s beam fell upon the side of the large shed first. Scott had the bag of guns clanging against his hip, his sister’s hand gun already drawn.

               “Eager there, Katie-cakes?” Seth mocked. She didn’t respond, her big eyes flashing from under a grey knitted cap, and he shook his head. “Whatever, let’s just get this over with.”

He pulled at the sliding door and the three went in. The wind howled outside. Seth’s trailer was just a bloated hunch of blackness at the very back of the shed. He turned on the gas lamp as the farmer had shown him, and the wooden shed was flooded with a weak flickering gold. It smelled like damp manure.

Scott slipped the bag of guns off his shoulder and looked around, as if this were some quaint homestay. Kate cocked her gun and raised it at the trailer.

               “God, you are all fucking unbelievable.” Seth reached over and thrust the gun down. Kate glared at him, even after he walked away. Seth unlocked the hatch and shoved the metal door up overhead. At the end of the container sat the familiar fridge with its generator.

The three climbed up onto the landing, Seth leading the way. Kate still hadn’t lifted her gun yet, but both hands were wrapped tightly around the grip. Scott seemed almost curious.

Seth took the key ring from his pocket and reached for the padlock. He attempted to fit the key but his hands were shaking from the cold.

               “Wait,” Kate said softly. “Do you hear that?”

Seth huffed. “You guys have lived here longer than I have, but I’m just guessing it’s the wind . . .”

               “What do you hear, Kate?” Scott asked, turning to her as if pulled.

               “That generator keeps the refrigerator turned on, right?”

               “Uh, yeah. Snakes don’t like the cold, remember? Keeping Richie like this, keeps everyone safe—,”

               “Okay, but don’t refrigerators hum? Don’t they make some sort of noise when they’re turned on?”

Seth froze, bent over. He looked over to the plug supposedly connected to the generator.

It wasn’t.

Like the sound of thunder clapping, the refrigerator door slammed open and Seth was launched against the trailer wall. A rattling tail swooped high and knocked Kate and Scott far off their feet.

A shriek echoed in the darkness.

               “Scott, go! Get the bag!” Kate, bleeding from her temple, raised the gun and fired twice into the open casket. The scream emanated again. “SCOTT! GO!”

The younger Fuller scrambled onto his feet and tumbled down the bed of the trailer.

One scaled foot, the remnants of a single black loafer still attached, stepped out on the cool metal. An eight-foot-tall creature followed. Pale grey, diamond-patterned scales rose up its massive foot, twisting around a thick body. Wide, sharp talons flexed at the end of two incredibly powerful arms, meeting at a smooth, paled torso. The rattling tail shivered on the bottom of the floor. Where Richard Gecko once was, a snarling mouth lined with razor-thin fangs preceded four hypodermic needles, the thickness of a grown man’s thumb. Its searing, elongated iris blinked, adjusting to its surroundings.

               “Oh, fuck me,” Kate hissed. She pulled her feet under her and leapt down the edge of the trailer. Scott was already waiting with the shotgun, loaded and pointed. Kate leapt to the side. “Shoot, shoot, SHOOT IT!”

Scott unloaded three rounds into the darkness of the trailer and another scream pierced the air.

The creature emerged, its talons crunching the metal as it pulled itself out. It dropped down onto the hay-strewn floor and hissed. A foot-long forked tongue lashed out from between its fangs, the yellow eyes fixed right at the Fuller siblings.

               “Holy shit, what the fuck is that?” Scott’s mouth dropped open. “ _That’s fucking Richie?_ ”

               “I don’t care!” Kate screamed. “JUST SHOOT IT!”

Suddenly, a shadow leapt out of the end of trailer and threw itself onto the back of the creature. It roared, furious. Seth, suffering a bad nose bleed, had his arm around the creature’s neck, as if he could possibly choke it unconscious. It screeched and swatted at him.

               “SETH, WHAT _THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?_ ” She screamed at him.

               “Do I shoot it now?” Scott shouted, the gun still raised.

               “NOT WHILE I’M ON HIM, YOU MORON!”

Kate’s eyes fell on the bag again.

The creature and Seth struggled, its giant torso twisting while its tail thrashed uncontrollably. And then one of its giant talons reached over its shoulder, dug its claws into Seth’s back, and forcibly flung him to the ground. Seth rolled out of the way, groaning when he stopped.

Its claws dripping with fresh blood, the head hissed again. But one of its quarter-sized nostrils began flickering. Like a dog smelling a steak, the giant head turned, its pupils blown wide, and the long tongue flew out. It began to lap up Seth’s blood from its claws with frantic licks.

               “Oh my God, that’s disgusting,” Scott scowled.

               “Hey asshole!”

The snake creature blinked and looked across the shed to Kate Fuller, her raised hand bleeding, and holding a rifle in the other. “You want some more fresh blood, and lots of it?”

               “Kate, don’t, we’ve gotta help him . . .” Seth groaned.

The creature hissed then, falling forward like an ape, rushed her.

Three cracks and three bullets fired and what was left of Richard Gecko fell forward.

Seth groaned in agony and rolled to his knees. He felt the blood from the open wounds on his back begin to glide down his ribs, like cold tickling fingers. He was also pretty sure a couple of those were cracked. Seth reached up to try and put some pressure on the closest scrape.

               “Holy shit, did you kill him, Kate?” Scott rushed over, looking at the unmoving hulking mass on the floor.

               “You better hope to Christ you didn’t,” Seth snarled, storming towards them. Every step hurt like a knife spiking into his shoulder. “Or I swear to God, Kate Fuller, I’m gonna—,”

Her eyes were like raging forest fires. “Or you’re gonna _what? Lie some more?_ ” She threw the rifle to the ground and strode to meet him halfway across the shed. “At what point was bringing guns to this an overreaction? You were just going to feed us to your chained-up monster like a midnight snack? _Is that it?_ ”

               “I had no _fucking clue_ he looked like that!” Seth thrust a finger at the creature beside him. “You think I’m suicidal? He fucking got me too, alright?”

               “I think you’ll lie and manipulate and say anything to get what you want!” Kate snapped back. Her chest was heaving and her fist were tightened into fists. “My brother and I are just collateral damage on your fucking journey to— wherever the fuck you think you need to go— and we always have been! And you’re the selfish prick—,”

               “Oh, I’m the selfish one, sweetheart?” Seth gaped at her. “Don’t tell me you took out my brother in some noble defense of your own. You shot Richie in cold blood because you’re still royally fucking pissed at us!”

               “ _I have every fucking right to be . . ._ ”

They stopped within an inch of each other. “Then let’s have it out, yeah?” Seth muttered, glowering into those self-righteous flaming green eyes. “You and me, two pistols, and we’ll see if you’re half a good a shot as you think you are—”

Her lips were open in a snarl. Seth was ready to take anything that came out of those cracked, round lips— ready to fall head first into them— when Scott pushed them apart.

               “Jesus Christ, you guys.” He stood between them like a teacher trying to break up a fight, looking back and forth to them try and break their tenuous gaze. “Kate didn’t kill Richie. She shot him with culebra venom. It’s the only thing that seems to work for a long time against them. They can’t heal from the venom, okay? He’s going to be fine in a couple of hours, and before then we have to figure out a better way to keep him locked up. But we can’t do that if you guys are going to tear at each other’s throats every chance you get.”

               “Fine.” Kate was still glaring across her brother. Seth’s back was aching and he didn’t look away first. But his heart was clanging so loudly in his ears, he almost didn’t hear her agree to the cease-fire.

               “Fine.”

Kate stepped back and snatched up the rifle. “I’ll get some chains from the truck.” She heaved the gun bag onto her shoulder and stormed out. “And don’t ever call me ‘sweetheart’ again or it’s your head I’m going to blow off.”

* * *

_Two Months After_

She woke up to the sound of laughter and soft Spanish guitar music. Kate lifted her head up off the pleather of the back seat of their most recently stolen car. It was pitch black outside and Seth was nowhere to be found. The brief spike of panic was subdued when she realized he was outside, sitting on the hood, drinking something. The front lights were on and the windows were rolled down. Kate’s stomach growled and she opened the door.

The Mexican air had gotten cold. A breeze picked up and swam smoothly around her head. She tucked a fly-away hair behind her ear as she went to the front of the car.

               “Seth?”

He jumped, the tequila falling out of his mouth, and the grin fading.

               “Jesus Christ, you scared me.”

               “Who else would it be?”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded in agreement. “Touché, princess, touché . . . “

               “What are we doing out here? I’m starving.”

Seth slowly shook his head, the movement sluggish and distracted. “I couldn’t hear the music so I pulled off the road and then, it was just quiet. For the first time in four goddamn months, everything was quiet.”

               “Oh my God, you’re drunk.”

He glared at her. “You can drive. It’s not a big deal.”

               “Fine. Give me the keys. I want to go home.” She opened her palm but he shrunk away. “C’mon, Seth, please—,”

               “I can’t hear the music there!”

               “So what?”

               “ _So, it was the only thing Richie listened to drive up to fucking Texas, alright?_ ”

Kate blinked. The wind blew and the bony cacti next to her jittered. Seth took another long pull from the bottle. His hair had gotten so long over the past couple of months.

               “I heard one of the songs, and . . . I just couldn’t let it end.” He ran a rough thumb over the label of the bottle, trying to focus. “Even then, driving out to the job, I knew something was up. Richie has always been bat shit crazy, but this was different. Everything about this entire fucking job for some wacko named Carlos was different and I should have seen it coming. But I didn’t.”

Kate closed her eyes before deciding. She wrapped her plaid shirt tighter around her torso before trudging forward. She climbed up onto the hood of the car next to him, and took the bottle right out of his hand. She took a sip— it was terrible— and she made a face. But Seth was hazy-eyed. Looking out to nowhere in particular.

               “I just feel like I could have said something. Done something different, and it all would have been okay.”

He took out his gun and tossed it back and forth. Two months ago, she would have been alarmed. But by now, she knew the gun and all its pieces were simply a distraction.

               “Shit, if I could just get one more shot at that mega snake bitch, god, things would be different.”

Seth fired twice into the ground and from one of the bushes nearby, a fuzzy blur raced into the night.

               “Seth, you’re scaring the jackrabbits.”

He swiveled his head at her, looking through bleary eyes. She only raised an eyebrow in response. He sighed.

               “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. For you . . . to be . . .”

               “I know.”

She took another sip, pausing with her hand on the back of her mouth. She was woozy already, with two long drinks on an empty stomach. She laid back on the warm hood and looked up. What she saw was truly breathtaking.

Some cosmic painter had taken out every blue and navy and purple at their disposal and lit up the night sky. Each star glittered and nebulas were spread out like hills full of diamonds. The milky way was a stretch of pale blues and clusters of white pinpricks.

               “Scott’s favorite time of the day was always at night,” she said suddenly. Seth turned to her.

               “Yeah?”

She smiled to no one in particular. Her heart weighed darkly in her chest but something about the brilliant sky was comforting. Despite the distance between them, she knew her brother was under the same patches, same dark twinkling lights. Her throat tightened and she willed herself not to cry.

               “This ain’t your average starry night,” Seth said after a while. He leaned down, one arm holding him up and holding the bottle. “This is your _extreme_ starry night.”

               “So say you, Mr. Scientist?” She teased softly, grinning.

He nodded slowly, a dopey grin spreading across his face. “So say I.”

She giggled in spite of everything and he smiled back at her.

               “Do you even know where we are?”

               “Sure. Near Oaxaca . . . I think.”

               “So we’re lost?”

               “Nah, we’ll figure it out.” Seth sighed again and looked back up at the sky. “Richie always said to follow the North star if we ever got separated. The North star meant home.”

Kate followed his gaze. There were a million North stars up there. Every single one leading to a new place. A different road. Nowhere near home. Wherever that was.

               “Seth . . .”

               “Yeah?”

Under his heavy gaze, she forgot her question. Under an ever-expanding universe, she had never felt so small. She sat up, his body drawing back, upright, as if expectant. His mouth was open, a sloping ‘o’. She couldn’t look away from his lips.

               “Seth.”

               “What, Kate?”

She had never known true danger until she was trapped in an ancient temple awaiting a bloody death. Never before had she stared over the edge and dared to glare the abyss in the eye. But she, here, now, one hundred and fifty days later, knew what that meant. In the darkness, his eyes were bright.

Kate rolled backwards off the hood, her hands shaking and the feeling of being absorbed far too overwhelming.

               “Seth. I’m cold.”

He blinked.

He slid to the side, stumbling slightly as he stood.

               “Yeah. You drive.”

* * *

She definitely wasn’t being gentle. Seth’s hands flexed around the back of the chair and ground his teeth against the pain.

               “Remind me again why Scott wasn’t the one who could do this?”

               “He doesn’t know how to do sutures. Plus, I can’t lift Richie into the freezer by myself. Now, stay still.”

She leaned forward and drove the needle in through the edge of his ripped skin. They had been at it for at least thirty minutes, Kate finally on the last tear. Seth scowled and looked ahead into the vanity mirror in Kate’s bathroom. It was the only room in the house with a bright enough light in the thick Alaskan darkness so that Kate could see clearly enough to sew him back up properly. But truth be told, it just made him look old. He hadn’t even noticed the spark of grey starting at his temples. He was probably too often covered in blood for anyone to notice, and it wasn’t like Seth spent a lot of time in a mirror. And the tired, grouchy reflection staring back at him was reason enough for him to never do it again.

The light also reflected back the white lattice of scars here, and there, and without a conscious thought, his eyes fell on the two dents at his throat. It had been a long time since he had brushed his fingers across that terrifying memory. The black flames threading up his right arm to his throat managed to hide the puncture wounds well, but on your own body, you always knew where your deepest scars lay.

Seth glanced over his shoulder at the moving bob of dark hair. Her eyebrows were knitted together, focused and determined. Her hands moved swiftly, securely, wrapping, pulling, tightening his skin closed. He felt her finger tips brush his uninjured skin, and he looked to the ground.

               “So, where did you learn to do that? You’ve gotten a lot . . . faster.”

Kate raised an eyebrow slowly. “If you’re mocking my earlier handiwork . . .”

               “Hey— alright, my elbow and I appreciate whatever you did. We’re still together because of it.”

At that, Kate shrugged slightly. “It’s okay. I’m a big enough person to admit it was a fairly shoddy job.”

               “But now you’re talking about sutures, and you’ve got real tools,” Seth said, nodding to the fairly sophisticated medical kit on the counter. There were red rags from where she had cleaned his back of the bloody trails. No one had cleaned the split above her left eye. “No more back-alley sewing needles.”

She glanced at him in the mirror before returning to the needle. “I found Scott when I was twenty-one. By then, I had been practicing on clothes, pillows, blankets, whatever I could get a hand on. I knew what was coming, and I knew there was going to be a lot of blood. The librarian in the Phoenix city library must have thought I was in medical school, walking out with stacks of books on resetting bones, how to manage concussions . . .”

Seth turned over his shoulder to look her in the eye. “You went to Arizona?”

Kate stopped and leaned back in her chair, her gloved hands smudged with blood, still holding the curved needle. “Scott always wanted to go to school there. I didn’t know where else to look.”

Seth felt something stretch his throat, covering his wind pipe, as he watched her dark eyes. She was challenging him, daring him to say a single word about it— about how he abandoned her. Her jaw was set tight as though she expected him to start yelling again. Instead, Seth looked away, and adjusted his arms over the back of the chair.

Behind him, Kate picked up the small scissors and cut the loose string at the base of his final stich. “There. You’re done.”

She stood up and went to the medical kit, standing solidly to his left.

There were so many things he wanted to say. They all sounded desperate— weak, pathetic. Every word would simply be an excuse for a failure that was more deep and cutting than any physical attack. He failed her. He failed _her_. And here he was, stealing from her again. Stealing her time, her resources, her secrets, so he could continue on with a life only half full. Half full because there were things he wanted to say back then, too. And they pulled him down, like a noose slowly tightening around his throat for five years. He was losing breath and everything was blurry, until she stood there and grounded the whole goddamn spinning world.

               “Thanks”, he said . . . lamely.

               “You’re welcome.” Kate tucked her hair behind her ear. “Seth, look, about before—,”

               “Holy shit, Kate, your neck.”

Her hand immediately flew to her throat, ashamed. But he had already seen it: the healing scar of a culebra bite mark.

               “Who— who did it?”

Kate swallowed and looked down at the thread in her hands. He had caught her off guard. Couldn’t think up a lie or a place to run fast enough. So she had to tell the truth. “When I first found Scott, he was still angry. Angry at the world, at Daddy, at me. He wouldn’t talk and he took off every time I got close to him. I had track him for a while. He was all over the map, furious, in pain, and when it got bad, hungry. I found him outside a bar in Tulsa, cornering this old homeless man. I got in between them, and he bit me instead. And he drank . . . and drank, and drank . . . and that was the first time in my life when I thought I was going to die. Maybe I just wanted to. But then, he stops and tears himself away. Scott, he’s crying. My angsty eighteen-year-old monster is sobbing at my feet, begging me to save him. I took him back in that night, and after that, he only ate from animals and donated blood.”

_My angsty monster . ._ .

Seth was staring at his mangled right hand again, a sudden dull throbbing beginning right behind his palm.

“Richie once said that sometimes things are picked up from a culebra meal. Traits. Abilities. Sometimes, memories. Maybe Scott got a mouthful of something and couldn’t do it.” He said, to their reflections.

               “He says he saw the first day I thought of him as my brother. The day he really joined our family.” She was staring right back at him, his double in the glass. “Seth, what happened to your hand?”

He closed his fist, as if it were possible to hide the ugliness. He knew she was watching him, patiently waiting for the truth.

               “After that morning, I rode a bus for six hours. I don’t know what godforsaken town I ended up in but it had what I was looking for. I had lost Richie, I lost . . . everything, and I wanted out. I bought a score and got high for the first time since I got out of prison. The next six weeks were the worst of my life. At least I think it was six weeks. It could have been two hours or four years. Heroin does weird shit like that. I’m in an alleyway, down to my last few grams, and some guy approaches me. I think he’s going to try and rob me, so I raise my gun and unload. Of course I miss. But I hadn’t cleaned my gun in weeks and the last bullet catches wrong and the fucker explodes. So I’m high as fuck, bleeding out, and about to be robbed for all I’m worth. But this is the thing that gets me. The stranger, it’s Richie. He found me. He took me in and got me clean and it’s been like the old days ever since. I gotta save him, Kate, or bad karma’s gonna hit me like a goddamn truck one day.” He almost chuckled, but the noise died in his throat when he looked back up and saw her staring at him in the mirror.

Her expression hadn’t changed. But there was a small crease in the middle of her forehead, a sign there was some semblance of charged emotion going on behind those green eyes.

For the first time in a long time, Seth reached up and touched his own faded scar. Her own hand was bent on her shoulder. They stared for a long time without a single audible word passing between them, their hands covering their mirror wounds.  

The front door snapped open and Seth stood abruptly, Kate digging into the medical kit again. She tossed the bloody gloves just as a bundled-up Scott entered the room, fresh in from the cold.

               “Whew, okay, big scary snake dude is still unconscious in the downstairs meat freezer. Power triple checked— plugged in and working. Bearing a freak lightning storm or a pack of water buffalo running through to shake things up, it shouldn’t disconnect. But tomorrow, we should probably get some supplies from town.” Scott glanced between his sister and Seth, who was still shirtless and resting his knuckles on the counter. “Everything okay in here? You did sew him up, right, Kate?”

Kate’s rueful glare snapped back into place as quickly as she shut the lid to her medical kit. “Of course, I did.” She threw a cold glance to Seth. “Put your clothes back on. Go get the book you brought, there’s something I need to look at.”

She strode past the both of them. Seth grabbed the borrowed shirt off Kate’s bed, and pulled it over his head.

               “Those are gonna be some sick scars, man,” Scott gave his lopsided grin.

               “Thanks, _man_.”

               “Seth.” Kate was standing in the kitchen, bent over the table heavily loaded with several books, what looked to be old scraps of paper, and some rough drawings. Her mouth was a thin line. “The book, please.”

He reached into his heavy jacket and handed it over. She took it, and began to flip through it. Seth thought of the no doubt countless hours she spent in darkly lit, shady libraries until obscene hours of the night studying, researching, planning how to save her brother. How exhausted she must have been. How lonely. Was that where she lost the soft curve of a youthful face? In between the stacks of medical tomes, preparing for war?

               “You said he was bitten by El Devorador?”

Seth nodded, his mouth unspeakably dry. He crossed his arms as if to ward her off.

               “This guy?” She asked, tapping a sketch in another journal. It was crude angles and sloping lines, like most of the culebra mythology artwork went.

               “Big ugly fangs, nasty hair, and a penchant for nibbling off the head of snakes? Yeah, that’s him.”

Kate frowned, scanning the passage next to the image. “He’s seen as a conqueror among the culebras. For centuries, he’s taken over culebra territory, their operations, their wealth. Because he’s got some associate with the felidaes—,”

               “Do we know what those are?” Scott asked.

Kate looked to Seth to respond. He shrugged. “They’re like the warring gang to the snakes. Only thing I’ve ever seen that scares ‘em shitless. Think giant cats with hands.”

               “Ooh, like a werecat?” Scott grinned.

Seth narrowed his eyes. “Sure. Like a werecat. Richie and I went after the conqueror guy because we’d heard a rumor that there was a bigger payload than our measly forty mil coming out of Texas.”

               “Well, after centuries of hording, I’m sure there is,” Kate murmured. In one hand she held the text about Devorador, while running a finger along a loose sheet in the other.

               “Okay, so he’s a conqueror. Why does his venom turn culebras into— whatever’s literally chilling in our freezer?”

Seth reached forward and picked up one of the books. Richie would lose his mind to see his brother doing any sort of research. He began flipping through the pages, covering topics from the anatomy of the culebra venom gland, to some place called Xibalba. “The local snake-heads kept saying something like, ‘gee-raro’, ‘gay-rera’ . . . Jesus, Kate, where did you get all of these?”

               “Good Reads,” Kate answered without looking up. “I googled the professor and found his colleagues. Turns out there’s a community of weirdos, translating ancient texts just like him. Was the word ‘guerrero’?” She stepped up beside him, pointing to a word in her text. Their elbows brushed. Seth nodded.

               “Yeah, that sounds about right. You asked for help from s _everal_ Sex Machines?”

               “‘Guerrero’, that means ‘warrior’.” Scott took hold of the chair in front of him by the back. “He turns them into warriors?”

Kate’s frown deepened. “I don’t know what’s hyperbolic metaphor or reality. It just says, ‘the Conqueror spreads his curse like a scourge on the earth. His power expands, and from the bodies of his enemies, he raises a new army of warriors. He is undefeatable.’”

Seth crossed his arms, distancing himself a bit from Kate and her books. “These book nerds are painstakingly wordy, but to find you— you, you guys— I followed the stories like a map, and I ended up in fuckin’ Alaska.”

               “So then if it’s not just poetic mumbo jumbo, ‘from the bodies of his enemies’ . . . what the hell does that mean?” Scott glanced between Seth and Kate.

               “Scott,” Kate began suddenly. She suddenly began rifling through the loose scraps of paper. “When you put Richie in the freezer, did he have any marks on him?”

               “What?”

               “I shot him twice, and you hit him with three rounds of a shotgun blast. Was he bleeding?”

Scott frowned. “Now that you mention it, no.”

               “’Warriors un-phased by any mortal weapon’—,” Kate tapped a line in one of her texts and pushed it towards the boys. “’Warriors with the strength of five men’ . . . ‘warriors with the speed of ten lake eels’ . . . they weren’t being hyperbolic, they were using only measurements they had.”

               “He wasn’t making just ‘warriors’ . . .” Scott began.

               “He was making goddamn super-soldiers,” Seth murmured. “To spread like a scourge on Earth.”

When Kate looked up, there was an infectious glint in her eye. “And rack up a score bigger than forty million dollars. Probably more than forty billion, calculating for inflation.”

Scott smirked. “Only you would calculate for inflation.”

               “Okay, so, he’s got the ability to make a bunch of ‘roided scaly pit-bulls, but what does it say about getting them back?”

At this, Kate’s face fell. “It doesn’t.”

The room fell silent, the air suddenly heavy, compromised. Seth scoffed. “What? That’s it? We make one _iota_ of progress and you just want to give up? What happened to circling the fucking wagons?”

               “No one said we’re giving up, Seth,” Scott said slowly. “It just makes things more . . .” He glanced at Kate. “Complicated.”

Kate glanced at her brother, her eyebrows still heavy. A silent communication passed between them, one they didn’t want Seth to hear.

               “Ah, ah, ah— no! Nope. None of that sibling secret bullshit. Out with it.”

Kate looked to the ground and somehow managed to fall into herself. The wall was dropping in front of Seth’s eyes and he couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t get to her fast enough. Scott watched it fall with sad eyes.

               “Look, Seth, what you don’t know— what Kate did to bring me back— it was painful.” Guilt flashed so strongly on the sharp contrast of his face, Seth felt his stomach drop out. Did he ever look that terrible? He knew he felt it. “Getting me back almost killed her. And Richie’s a lot further gone than I ever was. Our first step has to be getting him back to being human— well, less scaly.”

               “Okay, I’m on board with that.” Seth nodded and put his hands on his hips. Kate’s face was still dark. If she would just look up . . . “How do we make that happen?”

Kate put the book down on the table and turned away, as if she was going to be sick. Scott’s face was draining of color. “Kate. I know what you’re thinking. We don’t have to go down that road. There’s gotta be another way.”

Kate shook her head, her lips pinched together tightly. She dropped her head and her dark hair spilled over her shoulder like warm molasses.

               “What are you talking about? What are you guys hiding from me?” Seth asked indignantly.

For the first time, Scott glared at Seth with real irritation. “Look, Ranger Gonzales took us to get me healed, and we got a bunch of his stuff, alright? Kate, are you alright?”

               “Why do you have the old sheriff’s shit?”

               “Ranger Gonzales sent it to us in his will. He’s dead.” Kate looked up, ignoring her brother and boring straight into Seth. “We killed him.”

* * *

That night he heard them fighting again, and his gut wrung itself into unbearable knots.

               _“You don’t have to do this, Kate. Nobody’s making you!”_

_“Yes, I have to! I have to do this!”_

_“Why? You’re going to kill yourself over the Geckos brothers?”_

_“No, Scott— it’s not them— it’s—,”_

The shouting faded and the lights in the windows danced as someone moved across the room inside.

_What are you going to say to her?_ Richie’s words knocked around his head and whirled out as condensation against the glass. Seth smeared the window clean and continued to watch the house.

Consciously, he knew nothing was coming. He knew the snakes wouldn’t follow him up here. He knew the felidaes, the police, the whole goddamn country of Mexico was far behind him. But still.

Still. Seth stood in the window of the Fuller garage, watching her silhouette shimmer behind the yellow curtains.

* * *

_Six Months After_

She tucked her hair back into her scarf and pulled it over her face as the final chorus rang out against the white stucco walls. The end of her pew was filing out, paying their final respects to tabernacle at the front of the church with a gentle genuflect. As the man in front of her bowed, Kate looked up to the meek nativity scene near the altar with the Star of David swinging from the low ceiling above them. The final thrumming beats of Little Drummer Boy were accompanied by soft murmurings in Spanish of the remaining parishioners. It was December 24th and she had convinced Seth to let her to a midnight Christmas mass alone.

When it was her turn, Kate dropped one knee and crossed her body in the sign of the cross. The gun tucked in the back of her pants scraped her skin as she knelt and immediately she blushed a furious red. That was his contingency; she could go alone but she had to take a gun with her. They hadn’t run across a culebra gang in over three weeks, she countered, and she was going to a church, not a strip club. He wasn’t hearing it. It wasn’t until she flat-out told him that come hell or high water, she was going, and that was final. The look she gave him was a mix between the stern glare she used on Scott to keep him out of her room, and the pleading pout she used on her father to let her hang out with Kyle.

Seth had rolled his eyes, uncrossed his arms, and pulled out his handgun from the back of his jeans. It was still warm in her hands. She conceded. In the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t a terrible thing, having some sort of protection, but during the entire service, it pressed painfully into her back. And now, her shirt nearly riding up as she bent forward, she felt like a proper sinner.

She stood, taking her time with the sign of the cross, before interlacing her fingers and dropping her head. As she turned towards the back of the church, she focused on several prayers for Scott, one each for her mother and father, and the people of Bethel, and the people who needed faith, love, and strength for whatever challenges they faced. This was how she always closed out her prayers, just as her parents had taught her.

But then she hit a blank. There was always another group, another needed people, per her parents’ instruction, to consider in her offerings . . . but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember. She couldn’t complete her prayer. She was incomplete.

She blinked when a hand touched her shoulder. The priest, an elderly man, had stopped her on her way out. He frowned at her in concern.

               “¿Estás bien, pequeña?”

Kate swallowed, her rattled brain trying to dredge up what miniscule amount of Spanish she had received in high school.

               “Si, si, yo soy bien.”

               “¿Dónde está su familia? ¿Estas aquí solo?”

Most of the words flew around her like indistinguishable birds. But she recognized one. “Mi familia . . . Ellos estar en mi casa.”

She knew she was messing up her grammar but the priest’s pitying stare was drilling a hole in the bottom of her stomach.

        “Pero es Navidad! Debería estar celebrando con sus seres queridos.”

When she didn’t return his smile, it faded. She quickly shook his hand, desperate to hide her face. 

               “Gracias, padre, para el servicio. Ten buena noche.”

A wind picked up across the dark Mexican desert as she bounced down the wooden steps. She didn’t look back as she pulled the scarf forward, trying to keep the sand from lashing her eyes. The moment she disappeared from view of the church, Kate took the gun out from her jeans and kept it tight against her thigh, like Seth said. She marched forward, focused, a moving blur in the night. She had read somewhere that attackers were less likely to approach someone who didn’t look lost. The wind rattled the scattered Christmas lights on the pitched roofs of the downtown stores, all dark and vacant for the night. She walked half a mile in the dark, gun cocked at her side.

When she unlocked the motel door, the lights were off, except for the television flickering, and a single lamp in the middle of their two beds.

               “You made it home in one piece,” he said casually. Seth was propped up against the headboard, one bare arm tucked behind his head, and his long legs stretched out on the mattress. The remote was abandoned by his hip. He didn’t look over as she came in.

Kate shrugged and untied her scarf. “Guess even culebras want to celebrate Christmas.” She put his gun on the nightstand between them. “I told you I wouldn’t need this.”

He glanced at it out of the corner of his eye. “You would have thanked me if you did. There’s some pizza leftover, if crusty bread and stale wine wasn’t enough.” He pointed across the room with his chin.

She went to toss her scarf on her bed, but found a stack of colorful papers there instead. On the top was a ragged bow. The absurdity of it almost made her giggle.

               “I thought we said no presents.” She picked up the first clipping. It was a coupon for a free meal at Los Ojos Grande for presumably a free meal. But you needed six. And in fact, six there were. “Ah, a free carne asada. How thoughtful.”

               “We’ve hit the big leagues, kiddo.” When she turned over her shoulder to roll her eyes at him, Seth just shrugged. “They came with the pizza.”

She took off her belt and went into the bathroom to change out of what constituted as Church Clothes on the run in Mexico. When she came out, Seth had changed the channel. Instead, the flickering television showed a poorly dubbed It’s a Wonderful Life.

She was putting away her jeans when he asked, “so how was the service?”

The same empty feeling returned. She still hadn’t been able to remember what the last piece of the prayer was. Nor had she forgotten the sad, confused look on the priest.

No family . . .

Seth finally looked over at her. “Kate, that wasn’t supposed to be a thinker,” he said, almost chuckling.

She turned around, her brow furrowed. She moved and sat down on her bed, facing him.

               “I couldn’t remember my prayer tonight. Every time we went to church, I would always pray for my family, the town, the people who needed faith, love, and strength— and someone else. Someone else who needed prayers . . . but I couldn’t remember. I still can’t. Without my family there, it’s like, there’s something missing. Like there’s a chunk of my brain missing. And I feel like . . . I’m flailing around without it.”

His dark eyes were unreadable, his mouth drawn into a sharp line, as though he knew he could tear her faith apart but this one night he would let it slide. She swallowed and shook her head.

               “I know you think it’s all crap, and after everything we’ve seen, I get it. I do. But I couldn’t remember something that I’ve been doing over and over again for my entire life. It just . . .” She dropped her chin to her chest and picked at one of her nails. “It just makes me wonder who I am without my family. Without Scott.”

Her throat had become immovably dry. She picked up the coupons from her mattress and put them on the bedside table, next to Seth’s gun. Without looking at him, she peeled back the scratchy linens and crawled into bed.

Her nose was suddenly clogged and her throat was tightening painfully. Two tears leaked out of her eyes and she tried to sniff as quietly as she could. She tucked her knees to her chest. _God, please, stop crying._

She thought of Scott, out there, maybe alone, on Christmas. Was he alive even? Did he miss her terribly? Was he celebrating? Had someone given him a gift? Her mind flashed to the man sitting on the bed behind her. For all his bravado, he had given her something. And for some reason, that just made her cry harder.

               “Kate.”

She bit her tongue and willed the tears back into their box in her chest. She wiped under her eyes with the sheet and tried to clear her throat. “Y-y-yeah?”

               “Bring me that pizza box.” She swallowed. “And, uh, come watch this damn movie. Your Spanish is better than mine.”

Fighting an order from Seth Gecko had become like a second instinct to her. But she felt as though someone come in and scooped out all of her insides and left her raw, like a sad pumpkin. She tried to wipe her eyes as best she could before she slid out from under the covers and went to grab the box. His eyes were fixated on the screen, as though determined not to look at her. She sat down on the edge of the twin bed and took a slice of pizza. It tasted . . . wet, the soggy knot in her throat making it difficult to eat. But at least, neither of them had to talk.

He jostled the bed as he sat up and took a slice from the box. “So what are they saying?”

               “Um,” Kate cleared her throat again, this time with a mouthful of cheese. “George is applying for a loan and wants to use his life insurance as collateral. Potter, the other guy, says he’s worth more dead than alive.”

               “That’s kind of a dick move.” She heard him chewing behind her.

Kate nodded, her eyes on the screen. “That’s actually the point. George here in a second is going to try and jump off a bridge to give his family the money they need. But then angel gives him a wish and shows him what life would be like if he had never been born. And everyone he knows, their lives would have been terrible without him. It’s kind of comforting. Knowing the important impact you have on those around you. Like nothing’s an accident.”

Kate froze, realizing the irony of whom she was saying that to. She looked over her shoulder and found him staring back at her. The knot in her throat slipped down into her stomach and she looked away.

               “You get all that from twenty seconds?”

She shook her head. “The youth group at my church would play this every year. I could probably recite it in my sleep.”

Thirty minutes later, the pizza was gone and the empty box was on the floor between the beds. She was leaning up against the headboard and Seth had moved over to share room.

When the credits rolled in a dark room, Kate was sound asleep, her face dry, and dreams of her family only happy memories.

The next morning, Christmas morning, she awoke and saw Seth sleeping in the bed across from her. He was clutching one pillow around his midsection, the other mussing his hair. He was sleeping so hard, his mouth agape, it looked like someone had knocked him out.

Kate smiled. She got out of bed and went to get dressed. She took some cash from their loot bag and went to find coffee and pastries. Breakfast would be on her today.

* * *

The fresh snow crunched beneath his booted feet. He was already cold. It had begun the moment he stepped out of his little woolen cocoon this morning and went to eat whatever was in the cabinet. It certainly hadn’t stopped when he was greeted by the Fuller siblings by Kate’s truck. His “good morning” seemed to fall on deaf ears.

They pulled into whatever counted as the hardware store in a town of under a hundred people. The few by-standers looked about as friendly as the chainsaws inside. Seth slid in line behind the two Fullers as they climbed the wooden stairs into the one-story building, trying to avoid any particular nasty glare. Because, if fists started flying, he wasn’t entirely sure if back up would be coming. And certainly, he had no intention of brawling at any point with “Tiny” behind the counter, given that he most likely out-weighed Seth by two hundred pounds.

               “So, we’re looking for wood, construction chains, steel poles.” The three pulled off the main aisle and Kate took three small sheets of paper out of her pocket. “We’re looking for fortification. Anything we can keep Richie from escaping. Scott and I came up with some lists. Go find whatever is on yours and meet back here.”

               “I can’t,” Scott muttered. “I’ve got that . . . thing.”

               “What do you mean you can’t help?” Seth scoffed. “What thing could be so important—,”

               “No, Seth, it’s fine.” Kate shook her head, glaring at Seth, before nodding to her brother. “I know we’re running late. Get what you can, put it in my car, and we’ll meet you over there.”

Scott nodded sharply to his sister, before giving Seth a final look and heading off into the rest of the store.

               “Look, I get it, I’m the outsider here, but c’mon.” Seth leaned forward towards Kate, his voice dropping. She immediately frowned. He turned his back to the register and focused on her eyes. “You gotta start letting me know what’s going on. The shifty looks, the one-off sentences . . . all that’s missing is a goddamn secret handshake. If we’re going to be a team, you gotta start by trusting your partner.”

_Partner_. Ooh, wrong word.

Kate looked as though someone had slapped her. Her eyes hardened but for inexplicable reason, her mouth dropped in sadness, instead of fury.

The artificial lights overhead seemed to drain her of her color, hardline the cracks near her eyes. She looked so pale. So old.

               “I will. You need to know what you’re getting into. I . . . just—,”

               “What?”

Kate looked up into his eyes and he thought of Mexico City. He thought of the fireworks, her surprise, _her goddamn hair_ , of the giant rambling figures on stilts, and the Calaveras they ate, sitting on the steps of massive cathedral. The promise he made that night. Her voice as she accepted. What he wouldn’t give to go back to that night and start over. Do everything right. Say everything right.

               “Seth, what happened to me, I don’t know how to say it. . .”

               “You used to tell me everything.” He smiled softly, easily, comfortably, always with Kate. “C’mon, I know you remember Mexico City.”

A finger rose up between them, accusatory and furious. “Don’t use that— don’t use that as a reason for me to I should trust you.”

Seth’s face fell. “Wait, that’s not what—,”

               “You broke every promise you ever made to me when you left. Everything you promised fell apart and I couldn’t ask you why because _you weren’t there_.”

               “Then ask me now. I’m here now—,”

               “Oi— is everything okay over there, Kate?” A deep voice knocked between them. “Tiny”, or so it said on his name plate, was glaring at Seth. “Is this guy bothering you?”

Kate tore her eyes from Seth’s to the register. “No, I’m alright.” She dropped her voice, the sound laced with arsenic. “ _Not good enough, Seth, not good enough_.”

* * *

Seth wandered in between the shelves, his eyes glazing over the many lug-nuts, bolts, and nails of aisle 15. The handcart knocked against his thigh, filled with something— screwdrivers, maybe, some electrical cords, other things. He kept trying to clear his head, trying to focus, trying to see anything but her wide, pleading eyes, and numb the guilt that was turning his stomach to ash.

Power converters. Power converters. That’s what was next on his list, written in tiny, neat handwriting.

There had to be a way. There had to be some way to make her see. Make her understand that they could go back. That he was willing to fix things. To save Richie. To say—

Seth stopped.

He froze in the middle of the aisle, staring at a box sitting on the shelf.

No. That was too easy. Too obvious.

But, maybe, it was a start.

* * *

_Fourteen Months After_

A thick drop of sweat rolled out of her hairline, down her temple, and splattered onto the faded print of her novella. She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead and took a drink of Topo Chico, already warm, and yet somehow it was still a relief to the stifling air around her. Texas summers were hot, but with a little AC, some short shorts, and running quickly from the house to the car, it was manageable. Kate put the glass on the back of her neck and tried to focus on the Spanish words in front of her. The laundry room gave go escape. Beneath her, the washer rattled and coughed. She had thrown open every widow, every door inside the tiny motel washroom, but ended up switching off the dryer in the end. No amount of clean clothes was worth pumping hot hair into the cramped space. The fight with Seth about drying their clothes out on the railing would have to wait.

Sweat slithered down her back, dipping under the cup of her swimsuit and onto her stomach. If her clothes weren’t dirty from blood, pizza stains, or straight up dirt, they were grimy with sweat. Seth had run to get microwave dinner, and Kate took the opportunity away to try and clean a little bit up. Gathering what she could find, she changed into her suit and went to explore what exactly the front desk boasted as a “lavandería”.

She had picked up the romance novel a few miles back and to her great delight, she could understand some of it. She bought it on a whim and Seth had teased her for at least two days about it.

She took another long sip from her bottle and used context clues to understand what _coño_ meant.

The door banged open and Seth strode in, in his own swimsuit and something enclosed in his fist.

               “Don’t feel like you have to hide your porn from me,” he said, sliding his sunglasses above his head. He was smirking his devious smirk. “I fully support the sexual awakening of all young people.”

Kate glared, bristling, before dog-earing her page. “Okay, jackass, keep it up. One day, you’re going to need help from a friendly local and I won’t be able to save your mono-lingual ass.”

He leaned down backward on the dryer, one elbow propped up over the lid. “Don’t worry, you’re listed as my emergency contact. Plus, got you something.”

He tossed whatever was in his hands into her face— and she gagged. The smell was absolutely putrid. It was an undershirt, crusty and dirty as anything she had thrown in to the wash. But the smell— oh God, _the stench_ —

She hurled it to the floor and clamped a hand over her nose. “ _Seth— what is that? Did something die in there?_ ”

Seth sniggered and scooped up his shirt. “Found in the back of the car. Must have been there a couple of weeks. You offered to do the laundry. This is dirty.”

               “You’re disgusting.”

               “C’mon, you gotta wash it. Or I’ll put it in your be-e-ed. . . .” he pushed it into her face and she leapt back off the machine, scowling.

               “You keep that away from me!”

               “You can practice all your romance-novel kissing with it—,” he lunged for her, grinning broadly, and she swatted at him with her book.

               “I’m going to drown you, Seth Gecko!”

He had her cornered, the undershirt unrolled and held out like a towel, as if he was going to throw it on her. She had one finger raised in defense, when the laundry door opened again and in bustled an old woman, who paused in confusion. She looked like a curious owl, her glasses enlarging her eyes so much. The two in the corner froze. The old woman took one glance at them, tittered her disapproval, and went to the next available machine.

Kate took the momentary cease-fire to hit him on the side with her book. “You—,” he squirmed, feigning deep harm, “are ridiculous. Now, get out of here before someone calls the cops for public disturbance.”

She snatched the shirt out from his hands, which brought back the smirk. “I’m going swimming. You should come.”

               “Let me finish this load and I’ll be out— if I could get two minutes of some damn peace and quiet.”

               “Fine, I’ll leave you alone with your girlie magazine— Ow!”

She hit him again.

Thirty minutes later, after loading the damp clothes into the room and laying them out, she found Seth standing by the pool. His hands were firmly in his pockets, his glasses up against the late afternoon sunlight, and his previous mood gone. She knew something was wrong the moment she shut the black gate around the pool. She went and stood by him without saying anything.

               “I’ve been doing some thinking. About Richie.” His voice was low, strained. Anguished. “I just can’t believe he’s really gone.”

Kate nodded. “You know, I’ve been doing some thinking too.”

               “Yeah?”

               “Yeah. And I think those sunglasses would look better on me than you.”

               “What?”

In one swift movement, Kate grabbed his black plastic glasses off his face with one hand and with the other, shoved him into the pool. She casually slipped the glasses over her eyes and crossed her arms as he resurfaced. He squinted up at her and spit water out of his mouth.

               “Oh yeah . . . I’m _definitely_ going to fuck your shit up the second we get back.”

* * *

He dropped the box onto wooden table outside the small hardware store in front of her, shaking Kate from a reverie. He grinned at her with a smile so smug it could have sweetened black coffee.

               “What the hell is this?” Kate leaned back, lifting it up to look at this “present.”

Seth plopped down on the seat across from her and tapped the top of the box.

               “Once upon a time, I did a shitty job all by my lonesome. Made it out okay, but for all my troubles, all I got was some cleared checks and some chump change. However, I _did_ promise my get-away driver that it would be like a stroll through a park, and we’d walk out like—,”

               “We won a free toaster,” she finished slowly. Kate slowly brought the boxed toaster forward, her mouth slightly agape. It promised golden brown results every time.

Seth nodded pointedly, smirking. “Okay, so this wasn’t _technically_ free. Pretty sure ‘Tiny’ back there charged me an extra buck fifty because he could. But, the point is, I promised my get-away driver a toaster, and well, it’s time I paid my debt.”

The smile fell as he watched her look of surprise melt into something else, something softer. Something he hadn’t seen on Kate in five years.

               “Seth, I . . . I honestly didn’t think you remembered.”

               “Yeah, well, like I said, gotta clean my debts.”

It wasn’t joy on her face. It wasn’t surprise or awe. Seth was often a man of few words— and several explicatives— so there was no word, no phrase simple enough. She was merely . . . iridescent.

Kate swallowed and looked back up him. The glow in her eyes faded as though discovering something disheartening. “Seth—,”

               “I know there’s a lot more to, uh, make up for. And one stupid box isn’t going to cut it, but, I dunno— I was just thinking—,”

               “Fair’s fair,” she said, almost sadly. “You need to know what’s coming. C’mon, put this stuff in the truck and I’ll tell you on the way to meet Scott.”

She moved to stand, and he reached out and touched her arm, unconsciously. Immediately, he drew it away but the damage had been done, by the look on her face. “Kate, you have every right to keep secrets from me, but I—,”

               “I’m not doing this for you, if that makes you feel better.” It didn’t. “What I have is a curse and for what I had to give up to get it, I damn well better use it.”

* * *

_Two Weeks After_

When the policeman pressed his sweaty palm over her mouth, mind-numbing, terrible, bone-aching panic set in like a rabid dog bite. He thrust her face away from him, the back of her head scraping against the alley’s brick wall, as if he was going to let her live after this. Maybe this is what he wanted. To ruin her and let her slowly decay for the rest of her life. To rot from the inside out.

When she heard the jangle of belts being unbuckled and the scratch of a zipper move, a scream that could awaken the dead built up in her throat. Her fingers were mindlessly grabbing at the stake in her jeans, but he had both of her arms pinned down behind her, her elbows gashed sharply against the grain of the wall. He was muttering something in Spanish, the sound like the crack of a whip against flesh, and when she saw his eyes, the pupils were blown wide in anxious delight. She struggled but that only encouraged him more.

When she heard footsteps, she vaguely wondered if she would survive a gang taking multiple helpings of her. She hoped she wouldn’t.

When she heard a crack like lightning, she felt something spray warm, then cold against her face. The capture scream released itself in a managed gasp. The hand fell away from her mouth and Seth Gecko was kicking the body of her attacker. A policeman. Nothing holding her up, Kate dropped to the cement ground and watched clean black shoes run again and again into a paunchy stomach covered in blood. The body rolled over and the remaining bit of face crumpled in on itself, like a wet anthill. Blood and bone and brain were scattered across the back wall of the alley.

Seth was grunting each time he kicked. Something indistinguishable. Something that sounded like the emotion of fury. He kept kicking and kicking, pushing the body away from Kate. The star on the officer’s uniform twinkled and Kate finally processed what almost happened. She dropped forward onto all fours and vomited. Seth didn’t stop. He didn’t stop until he heard bones break and bits of flesh came off on his shoes. The body was hidden in the deep darkness off the alleyway.

Seth stormed into the light, his front covered in fresh blood. He looked almost deranged. Panting, he lurched forward onto the floor, across the alleyway from Kate, and dropped his head into his palms, one hand still holding the gun. The one he shot an officer of the law with at point blank range.

               “Jesus Christ, Kate— Are you FUCKING INSANE?” He barked so loudly it hurt her ears. “Why the fuck would you run off like that? That was so— _childish_ —,”

Everything in Kate’s vision was blurry. She knew she had to cry but her body was still reeling. Still reacting. Still trying to preserve itself from untold agony.

               “He said, he could take me back to . . .” her voice caught. “To get my passport.”

Seth groaned. He dropped his head back against the brick wall behind him. “For fuck’s sake. . . how many times do I have to say it?  it’s just you and me. That’s all that’s left. In the whole fucking world, for what matters. The sooner you get that through your damn head, the less bad shit will happen.”

He sounded tired. Exhausted even. As if he were convinced all of this were a bad dream to wake up from. For her, it was a living nightmare.

The tears in her eyes clogged her throat. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was thin, verging on a hopeless whine. She wrapped her arms around her chest and leaned forward. “I’m sorry. I just thought I could go home.”

Whatever cruel thing was building up behind his teeth withered the moment he stopped to look at her. He was looking at her like he would a beloved dog with a terminal disease. One that somehow he inflicted. The softness in his eyes broke the dam in her chest, and she was crying. She put a hand over her mouth and looked up into the sky. A sky where she believed a benevolent god resided. Somewhere in the clouds. Tonight, there were no clouds, only sharp white stars.

She heard him stand and approach her. He took her free hand and wrapped her fingers around the grip of his gun. He made her look at him.

“As of right now, I want you to know there is one goddamn certain thing out here. No matter how bad it gets, or how high the shit rises, you gotta promise me there is nothing you won’t do to protect yourself. Every day asshole, culebra, _fuck them_. Anyone tries to put their hands on you without your say so, you bury a bullet in their goddamn brains. There aren't fucking laws out here— and no one’s going to tell you no. You are the lawmaker now. And your only rule, and it’s an important one, is that you don't let anyone hurt you, ever.”

He no doubt imagined what he was saying was meant to be comforting, but it just made the weight in her stomach that much heavier. She swallowed and dropped his gaze.

               “I’m sorry I ran away,” she whispered to herself as much as him.

Seth stood, a towering shadow in the nasty, sickly overhead light. He took her forearm and pulled her to her feet, the gun in her hand knocking loosely against her thigh. He watched her as if he expected her to fall over and wasn’t quite sure if he was allowed to pick her up again. He cleared his throat.

               “There’s, uh, taco joint two—,”

               “Let’s just go. I want to sleep.”

Seth nodded and walked forward towards the other end of the alleyway. She followed him. Still, he watched her with weary eyes. Unsure eyes.

As they turned around the corner, she dropped her head onto his shoulder. Immediately, without hesitation, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and held her tight.

* * *

Scott Fuller was sitting under an oak tree, a bible in his hands, and about seven children, ranging from the ages of two to twelve, were sitting, enamored with his reading, at his feet. Behind them stood a simple yet respectable church. A pitched roof. A broken bell-tower. Two swinging doors. Chipped white paint. About a mile out from the center of downtown, the whole thing looked to have been constructed as a last minute thought. A gas heater sat on his other side, a metal chair under him, and the children each had their own blankets. Whatever story it was, it was largely better than Sunday school lesson Seth had heard: every tiny face was rapt, engrossed completely, as Scott acted out the words. He could have been telling them a bedtime story instead of the Word of God for all their entertainment.

He and Kate stood at the edge of a rickety fence that was more or less to outline the edges of the church property than for any security. She watched her brother, her eyes unspeakably sad.

They had stood in silence for a long time before she said anything.

               “After I found Scott, I didn’t know what to do. Feeding him just animals made him weak and groggy. It was torture to see my brother like that. But now, I was carrying a potential bomb every time we went somewhere populated. What if he broke out? What if he fed again? What if I lost him forever this time?”

               “So I called one person who had seen what I seen. I found Freddie’s number in a police station in west Texas. It took me five days to pluck up the courage to finally call him.” She swallowed. “I didn’t know what kind of answer I could give him, if he asked where I had been for the past two years.”

She looked to Seth, the only other person in the entire world who understood her dirty little secret. The one who made her keep it silent for five years.

               “But, eventually, he agreed to meet us. After the Twister, he really took up his whole mantle as Peacekeeper. Learned as much as he could about the culebras, about humanity’s peace with them. He kept records about what he ran into, where, why, the part they played in the whole cosmic blood dance . . . he was the only one who knew about a man named Alazar. I think he was a man, at least. Frederico said that Alazar had been the culebra mystic healer for hundreds of years. If there was anyone who knew if it was even _possible_ to turn Scott human, it was going to be this guy. But finding a mystical healer in the middle of the desert isn’t as easy as it sounds.” Kate rubbed her shoulders, as if the memory itself had the ability to harm her. “Shit . . .  we got so lost. Frederico never lost hope, though. Even when our water ran out. We were down to our last ration of food. The car was out of gas . . . and it was _so_ — _damn_ — _hot_ . . . I felt like my insides were melting. Freddie said Alazar came to those who needed it most. I remember laughing because I was about to lose the only other father I had ever known.”

Seth looked to the ground, crushing a pebble with his boot.

               “He told us to keep walking south, into the horizon. Either we would find Alazar or we would wander back into Mexico City. He gave up his rations to us that night and started walking east, to the Yucatan mountains . . . We never saw him again.”

Across the yard, Scott made a gesture and his small crowd gasped.

               “We were out of food, water, shelter. My feet were blistered and raw. I figured dying wouldn’t be so bad, if it meant an end to all this. I took off my mother’s cross, to hold in my hand, ready and willing to die. Scott was starving and drying out. I held him close and apologized for every bad thing I had ever done to him, to our family. He didn’t respond, so I thought he died. I waited for my turn.”

               “And then, I’m waking up and it’s night. We’re inside an open air tent. There’s water beside me and Scott is nearly done with his second bowl of blood. There is salve on my face for the burns and I can’t imagine this is what heaven is like. Someone walks in, and he looks human enough. Dark skinned. White hair. Gold painted stripes on his skinny body. He looks at me sadly. To this day, I wonder if he knew what I was going to ask before I did.”

               “He knows Scott is a culebra and we’ve come very far to find him in this place. I plead with him, crying, begging him to save Scott. I just wanted one more chance at a normal life with my brother, you know? And he tells me, he can’t do it. But then he says, that I can.” Kate turned her head and Seth watched the world melt away. She’s engulfing him and nothing is stronger than the scent of her hair and the breath within her. Those eyes kept him by her side for two years, and when she opened them that morning, he knew there was no going back. He realized something about her that he feared five years later would still be painfully, _agonizingly_ true, and he was the real monster for keeping her with him for so long. One word from her and he would have buckled.

               “So this is it, Seth, the part about why I don’t say grace any more. About why I keep my mother’s necklace in a box in the attic.” She looked to her brother, the self-appointed preacher, then to the church. Her jaw was set in a hard line. “Alazar told me there is no saving without sacrifice. What he is, is a direct affront to all religions of the world. He can work miracles and for that, all the gods have turned their backs on him. So, to save Scott, he made me like him. I can turn culebras human, but I can’t pray anymore. I can’t go church. I can’t even say _his_ name without feeling like my skin is on fire. I haven’t set foot inside a church in five years . . . and I feel like I’m choking. Like I’m adrift at sea and all the lights in the world have been shut off. I had to throw away the necklace because it burned my hand. I didn’t walk away from my religion, or love. I was thrown out and I’ve been begging for scraps ever since.”

At his feet, the children cheered and Scott laughed as several of the front rowers ran to give him hugs.

               “We somehow arrived in Mexico the next day with two thousand pesos in a duffel bag. A month later, we got our passports and headed back over the border. Two months after that, when we sold the house in Bethel and everything in it, the mailman dropped off ten boxes of Frederico’s research, to be delivered to us in the event of his death. He also left us the rest of the money he didn’t send to his family. So we left . . . and drove north. We drove until we almost ran out of road to drive on. We stopped in Bear Claw because we had no reason not to. We used the money to buy this house, the land, and we put everything of Freddie’s in the attic, along with. . . everything else. Scott got a job at the local lumber mill and I went back to pouring beer. We tried to live out this second chance.”

His left hand was so close to hers.

When he breathed, he wasn’t sure if her name that escaped his lips or it was just a thought rattling around his tongue.

_I’m sorry._

She reacted like he didn’t say anything, if he actually did at all. “Alazar took Scott’s eye that night . . . You have to be prepared to give something up to bring your brother back. That’s how it works.”

She moved away just as he reached for her wrist. _I’m so sorry_.


	3. Gathering Speed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm just saying it now: this fic won't be as good as the finale. That was the penultimate SK episode . . . and it's canon. I'm still not over it. Good lord. But here we go. Follow up to the shocking revelation that Kate can no longer seeks solace in God. What does that mean for her and the Gecko boys? We'll find out . . .

**Chapter Three: Gathering Speed**

               “Okay, pull!”

Seth strained, his hands clasped tightly around the inch-thick metal chain stretched roughly over his shoulder. He managed two steps, Kate to his left, and Scott on the other size of the freezer, all three tightening the tension around the long rectangular prison. The metal loop dug sharply into his back, no doubt ripping at least one of his new stitches. He got one more step in before their tugging evened each other out.

               “Alright— I think we’re good—,” Scott called, his breathing labored. “Put your stakes in.”

He felt something cold shiver down his hip. Blood. Damn it.

Seth took out the carbon-fiber steel, bear-trap grade ground stake, hooked it to the last link and shoved it into the cellar dirt. He stood up, his back aching and his hands raw. Kate had her hands on her knees, panting, while Scott was rubbing his sweaty forehead on the back of his arm.

               “Good work, team,” he sighed in between breaths. “If we’ve got physics on our side, if he tries to open this thing, the chains should work against each other.”

               “Are we doubting that the laws of physics are gonna hold up?” Seth panted, frowning.

               “Hey, man, your brother is a giant lizard. At this point, nothing would really shock me.”

Seth responded with a slow nod. They had actually managed a fairly intricate system. The meat freezer, fortunately bigger than the small refrigerator Seth had lugged up from Texas, was hooked up to an alternate generator than the rest of the house. In case the power in the house went out, that generator would keep turning. With a few of Scott’s upgrades, it would stand up against sub-freezing temperatures, a fire, and a flood. It’d hold up against all their bad luck, Scott had said with a grin. He had also carefully added a trip wire over the lid of the freezer. If it opened, they’d know about it the second it happened.

Seth originally had heavily opposed the bear traps set around the corners of the freezer, but after Kate thumped him on the back over one of his stiches, a reminder if nothing else, he conceded.

Scott adjusted his gloves and picked up a ball of barbed wire. “Almost done.”

They spent another hour and half, delicately crossing and looping the wire around the four wooden pillars in the cellar under the garage. In the end, Seth was almost impressed.

               “I gotta hand it to you, kid, you know how to fortify your shit.”

Scott shrugged. “It was either that or be eaten by an ancient warrior monster.”

               “What do you think, Kate? Think this’ll stand the—,”

She was already trudging up the wooden steps, not a single word left behind. The cellar flaps shut behind her, leaving the two men in semi-darkness.

Scott stared at the doors, his eyes sad. “So, she told you then?”

               “About Altoid the medicine man or whatever?” Seth sighed. “Yeah. Sucks for Gonzales though.”

Scott grimaced as though Seth had hit him. “Yeah. Still feel bad about that.”

Seth stared at a spot on one of the wooden steps, adjusting his jaw. “Does it ever go away?”

               “Does what go away?”

               “The guilt.”

Scott blinked at Seth, surprised. “About Ranger Gonzales? I mean, on some level, I know he chose to come with us and he knew the risks.” Scott swallowed, looking without seeing. “I just . . . never meant for that to happen. When Carlos bit me, I thought everything was going to be different, better. But in hindsight, I think I was just being selfish.”

Scott suddenly frowned. He narrowed his eyes when he looked at Seth. “You didn’t mean Ranger Gonzales, did you?”

Seth didn’t answer.

               “You should feel shitty about that.”

               “C’mon, man, I don’t need a lecture from—,”

               “I’m not lecturing, I’m just saying . . . you should feel shitty about Kate, and I think you do. We both have things to make up to her.”

               “Is that why you’re Alaska’s very own Joel Osteen? Because she . . . can’t?”

               “She’d be more pissed that you’d compared her to Joel Osteen, actually.” Scott chuckled. “But, sort of, yeah. She always bought way more into the whole God thing than I ever did, even growing up in a pastor’s house in Bethel, Texas. And now that she can’t have it, I feel like I have to be that connection now. Like a reminder than there’s still goodness in the world, there’s still hope. But, shit, sometimes I don’t know if I’m making it better or worse.”

Scott dropped his head and Seth felt such a pang of shared misery, he put a hand onto the younger Fuller shoulder.

               “Hey, c’mon, man, you were given a shit lot in life. By any standards, you’ve done a bang-up job with it. You’re still standing, which is a lot, considering.”

Scott lifted his head, his dark eyes rimmed with worry and concern. “Does it ever go away for you, the guilt?”

Seth scoffed darkly. “No. For me, it probably shouldn’t.”

* * *

_Eleven Months After_

The engine of the black Lexus roared and a wave of dust crashed into her face.

               “What happened to keeping a low profile?” She coughed and brushed at the salty air.

Seth glanced up at her from the driver’s seat, the convertible top dropped back, and a pair of jet black Ray Bands glistening over his eyes. His glee was tangible.

               “This isn’t for running in, sweetheart, this is for _fun_.” He reeved the engine and the car purred like a reigned-in jaguar. “Hop in, Katie-cakes, we’re going for a drive.”

He looked like something out of an action movie and Kate clamped down her heart from rising in her throat. “For fun? And isn’t driving what we do all day anyway?”

Seth rolled his eyes and cut the engine. “Look, the road stretches on for miles. You’re never going to get another chance to do something like this again.”

She leaned forward on the door, her elbows resting above the arm rest. “What? Drive around with a mad man in a stolen car?”

               “I’ll put it back,” he practically whined. “I bet Money Bags doesn’t even know it’s gone.”

               “Yet.”

               “Yet.” He grinned wolfishly and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “C’mon, Kate, you know you want to.”

Kate pursed her lips before unlocking the door and sliding into the seat next to him. The door barely shut, before he zoomed out of the motel parking lot.

Ahead of them, in every direction, there was nothing but desert and a heat-shimmering black top. Where he had found a Lexus out here was absolutely beyond her, but when he revved the engine again, taunting the damn landscape, she pushed the thought out of her mind, and quickly locked her seat belt.

               “Do you know what the first rule of street racing is?” Seth asked quietly. She had never seen him this thrilled. She gripped the seat, as if it would hold her in.

               “Don’t talk about street racing?”

Seth slammed the car into the next gear. “Don’t forget to breathe.”

The car shot forward as he pounded the gas pedal. They went easily from zero to sixty in five seconds. A panicked scream built up in her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut. Beside her, Seth hollered. The wind flung her hair back, a cool rush in the oppressive heat. A mile down, he jerked the steering wheel and together they spun out— Kate screamed— two circles before Seth slammed the car to a stop.

               “ _You’re insane!_ ” She hissed from between her teeth.

               “Am I?”

She glanced at him and she swore she saw a manic gleam. His eyes locked on her, he threw the car in reverse and shot backwards towards the hotel. He jerked the wheel left, then right, then left, then right in a zig-zag.

               “Is this too crazy?” Left. “Or this?” Right. Straight then another spin. The tires screamed in protest.

               “Seth, you’re gonna kill us!”

She squeezed her eyes tighter, hair whipping her in the face. She thudded in her seat as they came to a stop again.

He laughed beside her. “You gotta loosen up, Katie-cakes. Live a little . . . C’mon, baby, open your eyes.”

Kate blinked, not sure if she heard him correctly. She glanced at him. His white shirt was in stark contrast to the black leather interior of the car. He was still smiling, but it had softened. He dropped the sunglasses down to the bridge of his nose.

               “Look, the past couple of months have been a shit-storm. But right now, we don’t gotta worried about the fuckin’ snake-heads. Or the money. Or the next goddamn hell hole we sleep in. Right now, I don’t want you to think about anything, but this car, this blue fuckin’ sky, and feeling good as shit. Can you do that for me?”

Something swelled sharply in her chest and she nodded. He nodded back and slipped the glasses up. “I’ll start out slow alright. Tell me when you feel good.”

He pulled forward, the car grumbling, demanding it be taken advantage of, but Seth slowly padded the gas. Her hair slid into the air, the wind running over her cheeks, her lips. It was warm, kissed by sunlight. The bubble in her chest was expanding, but this time, there was a lightness to it that had not been there before. It grew as the car raced forward, headed nowhere in particular, and she wanted to grab his hand to steady her, to give her guidance down this path they were both on. Instead, she loosened her grip on the leather. The sky above her was a brilliant blue, strong and bold and it bent above her, like the back of a god stretched out from here to eternity. She knew if she could touch it, it would be gentle and tepid. Slowly, with the wind rushing through their bodies like they were flying, Kate raised one hand in the temperate air. Then another.

Her chest expanded passed what it could hold and she screamed again— but this time, it was _triumphant_. The sun engulfed her, dousing her skin, and she broke out into goosebumps, despite the overwhelming warmth. She screamed and it became the deepest laugh. It came from the pit of her stomach, underneath the memories, the death, and the loss and she laughed because she was alive and for one goddamn second, safe. She screamed and felt every single one of her years echo brightly beneath her skin.

When the car stopped for a third time, she giggled, giddy. She felt a sunburn on her cheeks when she looked at him.

               “How was that?”

She realized they were both panting slightly. Seth arched an eyebrow at her.

               “That was pretty incredible.”

               “So again?”

Kate sucked in a breath, and bit her lip. “Can I drive?”

               “I suppose . . . Birthday present and all that.”

She blinked. “How did you know?”

Seth unbuckled his belt, avoiding her gaze, shrugging. “You were talking in your sleep this morning. C’mon, princess, I’m sure they give licenses to fourteen year olds to the local yokels in Bum Fuck Nowhere.”

Kate frowned, her high fading. “I’m nineteen.”

Seth glanced at her, the playful smirk edged by something darker, heavier. “Is that right?”

               “Get out, old man. It’s my turn.”

* * *

The sound of an ax cracking against wood woke him up the next morning, and kept him awake. He washed his face, ate a few bites of jarred cranberries, and went outside, woolen hat low on his head.

               “You want some help?”

Kate paused, sweat trailing down her temples. Her grey shirt was stained with sweat, overcoat strewn to the wayside, her overalls tight on her shoulders. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, a loose curl trailing down from the knot of hair on her head. She nodded, indicating with a jerk of her head the second axe leaning against the house.

Seth shed his outer layer and picked it up. She put a block of wood on the tree stump in front of her, then gathered a second on a long bit of concrete, held up and welded together by two cement blocks. She turned from him and went back to hacking. He pushed up his sleeves, slipping on an extra pair of gloves lying near the wood shed.

               “How long you been at this?”

CRACK. The wood cleaved, but only partially. Seth swung down and his block shattered in half. Kate yanked her axe out and went down again. This time it broke fully apart.

“Couple of hours.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“I’ll eat when I’m done.”

Their axes fell in sync and the snaps echoed in the crisp morning. They worked in silence for a while, but Seth’s damn mouth couldn’t stay shut.

               “Is Scott—,”

               “Seth,” Kate huffed and paused, her cheeks bright pink from exertion. “Look, I know you want to talk about what I said yesterday. But there’s nothing much more to say. I’ve made my peace with it and so should you.”

She went back to work, and he hesitantly followed, but with every cut, his gaze lingered a little longer.

               “What?” She finally snapped.

Seth dropped her gaze, letting his axe fall.

               “So, it’s just gone from you? Just like that?”

Kate nearly growled and smashed her axe into the top of tree stump. “What do you want me to say? I physically can’t go near anything religious any more. I can’t hold a bible, I can’t sing a hymn, or touch a cross. I’m cursed, alright? I’m fucking cursed, and maybe I’m finally realizing I’ve been cursed my whole fucking life, so why not this too?”

His eyebrows knit together. “You’re not cursed, Kate.” He said softly.

               “My mother tried to kill herself, my father— the damn preacher— was an alcoholic. I’ve had to walk away from every single person I’ve ever loved at some point in my life and for what? So I can resurrect a species of blood-sucking murderers?” She bent down and snatched up another block of wood. Grunting, she snapped down and the wood burst apart. “I was going to be sacrificed to some ancient fucking gods in that temple, Seth, because I was pure. I was a virgin.” CRACK. “I prayed to some omnipotent being every fucking day, and all it did was destroy my family and set me up for a life of misery. And now, despite everything that I did, everyone I _forgave_ —,” CRACK, “I can’t even walk in his House anymore. It was either my safety net, or Scott, and— and— and I just—,”

She hurled the axe into the side of the trunk, snarling as she did. She was panting, her cheeks enflamed, and her hands were shaking. She wiped her nose with her gloved palm and glared at him. He said nothing.

“You know, cutting through a spinal cord is a lot easier than chopping wood,” she laughed darkly. She took another deep breath, and started pulling off her gloves. “So, is that what you wanted to hear? That I’m slowly losing it?”

Seth swallowed, his chest tight. “Goddamn it, you’re not cursed, alright?”

She smiled, shaking her head softly. “Maybe that’s what I am. _Damned_. Who’d a-thought, between the two of us, I’d be the fucked up one?” Her gaze flashed to him. “Good thing you got out when you did.”

He knew that was a direct punch, meant to hurt. But if this was how she wanted to take it, it was fine with him. “I didn’t leave because I thought you were fucking cursed.”

Kate nodded, looking at the sky, mock-considering. “No, you just left right after we had sex for the first time, right, because, what was it, I was too dependent on you? I needed you and you used me, like a fucking dry rag.”

A spark of anger proceeded the panic in his chest. “Jesus Christ, do you think that’s what it was? If that were even close to the truth, why would it have taken me two years to do anything?”

               “You had a passport then. You didn’t need or, apparently want, me trailing you back to the states.”

He blinked at her. She crossed her arms, glaring, her chin jutting out defensively.

               “Do you really see me as that kind of asshole, after _everything_?”

She cocked her head. “You didn’t exactly give me an opportunity to have any other opinion. You’re a criminal, Seth. Always have been, always will.” She pushed her curl out of her face and reached down and pulled the axe from the stump. “It was my stupid fucking fault in the first place for thinking I saw a different side in you. One that could actually care about another human being who wasn’t your fucking brother.”

_Fuck, if she only knew, if she had any clue about that night— that next morning—_

               “Kate, you don’t know the whole story.”

She rolled her eyes, and tossed the axe over her shoulder. “Please, Seth, don’t insult me with some bullshit excuse. You _fucked_ me, simple as that. I’ve run through every possibility, every excuse in my head as to why you suddenly left when I had given you everything, and—,”

               “I was going to burn the fucking passports.”

She blanched. “What?”

Seth closed his eyes briefly, staring at the ground when he opened them. She had kissed him that night, and shit, everything after had fallen into place. Finally, into place. Finally, after two years of _trying not to look_ , of looking away, of keeping his terrible hands to himself, she wanted him and opened up and he wanted nothing more than to drown so deep in her skin, he didn’t care if he never woke up. When he found himself, standing almost naked in the bathroom, a lighter and the two passports they had nearly died to get sitting on the counter in front of him, he was surprised, but really not. She was snoring a few feet away, her naked body warm, the pillows still smelling like her goddamn hair, an almost a smile wringing that perfect mouth, while he stood like the goddamn Reaper, about to purposefully going to destroy any chance she had at being normal. At being the good girl she was always meant to be— just to keep her with him. He had never held a heart before, not like this, not one that wasn’t bruised or dark or guarded or marred with abuse and drugs. This one had a life ahead and one that he didn’t need to be, and should never have been, a part of. He never touched her because Richie had been the one to do it first— the weird one who went after little girls. He remained, up until that point when the lighter so stark against the white tile, everything he had ever done was to protect her because the world was a dangerous place for girls with big, green eyes and small, tender hands. But after that moment, when he could still hear her moan in his head and he crumbled to her, loving her and desiring to be loved by her were two reckless truths that broke his heart . . . and would inevitably destroy her.

What happened in the Twister had been a deranged accident that he never saw coming. When he stood, in the pale sunlight of a beach-side bungalow, bits of her still swimming in his veins, his chest, his hair, and he truly, deeply, thoughtfully considered setting fire to her ticket home, to a brighter world without him, and that idea wracked him with such a crushing, woeful ache, his hands started shaking, Seth Gecko changed his mind and their destinies once again.

               “I was in the bathroom to burn our passports because I didn’t want what we had to end. . .  And I realize that selfish doesn’t begin to cover it.” He swallowed, and fingered the edge of the axe handle, unable to look up. “I fucked you and I hurt you and I left you because I thought I was doing right by you. _I swear it_. I swear it to whatever god you want me to, Kate.”

A rising sun was breaking through the overhead of clouds. Sunlight caught the back his neck, warming it uncomfortably. He finally looked up.

Her sweating had slowed, but her cheeks were still a vibrant pink. The tension in her muscles was gone, thrown away. Somehow, the corners of her eyes had softened, and her lips were parted. _Oh_ , she said without words. She hadn’t considered this option before and it burned him to know how much of a surprise it was that he, for her, could be unselfish enough to walk away.

Seth shook his head, looking down again. “This goes without saying, but I’m sorry,” he said, his voice as clear as he could make it. “If I had known that all of this would have come from choosing your fucking rambler to cross the border in, I never in a million years would have done it. I would have given up those two years with you in a second, if it meant giving you your life back.”

She made a strangled noise and he looked up, squinting in the sunlight. Her eyes were wide, as though she wanted to say something, but her open mouth couldn’t let the words through. They stood, petrified by their own secrets and guilt, when Scott came stomping across the yard, hands in his pockets.

               “Oh— uh, hey guys, whatcha doing out here?”

Kate blinked, dropping eye contact first. She tossed the two halves of the forgotten wood block into the shed and dropped her axe off.

               “We’re chopping wood, what does it look like?” She put her gloves in her pocket. He couldn’t stop staring. “Everything alright, Scott?”

Scott momentarily glanced at Seth before jerking his head back to the house. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I thought I’d get a jump on going through Freddie’s old stuff. And I think I found something.”

               “Alright, let’s see it.”

She stole one more look at Seth— he hadn’t stopped looking— before following her brother into the house.

The living room rug had been thrown back, revealing an open square hole in the ground with a wooden ladder leading into the darkness below. Scott went first, Kate, then Seth. Scott was adjusting the gas lighting when he came down to the ground floor. Seth let out a low whistle.

They had converted what possibly had been an old canning outfit into a magical bunker. The walls were lined with jars of various sizes, some unlabeled, others with floating pale chunks inside with a sticker reading “venom glands” across the front. In the far back of the long underground basement, there was a large shelf of books, some in English, some in Spanish, others in a language Seth didn’t recognize. Two thin wooden cabinets stood watchful to the left and right of the book shelf. In them were knives and swords of every length, width, and design imaginable. Various guns also hung in the cabinets, along with small throwing stars, a medieval flail, a crossbow, two sets of sais, a bo, a scythe, and gun with a detachable, firing stake.

The two Fuller siblings stood side by side at a table in the center of the room, their heads bent over a book. The table itself was littered with book, drawings, maps. Two open filing cabinets faced across them on the other side of the room, several drawers pulled out half way or fully extended.

               “Well, fuck me, the Ranger really came through,” Seth said, still taking it all in. “Where was all this shit in the fuckin’ Temple of Doom?”

Scott glanced over Kate. “Apparently a responsibility to keep the peace isn’t the only thing you get when you become a Peace Keeper. He says this shit one day showed up at his house, the postman saying his uncle whoever had died and left it to him.”

Seth picked up one of the nearby unmarked jars and rattled it. “I’m guessing uncle what’s-his-face didn’t really exist.” Inside of the green sludge, an eyeball rolled to the surface and winked at him. Seth quickly put it back. “So, what did one half of the Hardy boys find?”

               “Scott found a ritual called The Splitting of Closed Souls,” Kate replied, her hand tucked up against her chin, her lips pressing on her bent forefinger.

Seth raised an eyebrow. “That sounds . . . ominous.”

               “I’ve never tried anything like this before. I don’t know if I even can do it.” Her brow was furrowed as she read down the lines. Scott watched her apprehensively. Seth stepped behind her, reading the passage over her shoulder. He frowned.

               “Oh c’mon, this sounds like a bunch of hokey bullshit. _Guardians of the waters, hear my plea, release this—_ ,”

She spun and clapped a hand over his mouth. “The last time Scott read from one of these books, the table caught fire. This isn’t a joke, Seth.”

Her eyes were glaring again and her skin tasted like salt on his lips. She pulled her hand away and he drew a back a bit, his head suddenly a little hazy. Scott looked up from one of the papers on the table.

               “Alazar said your gift would be to save, maybe he meant this too.”

Kate shook her head. “But this, Scott, this is so much.”

               “What does it say then?”

Kate frowned. “It has to happen on a full-moon . . . we need some blood candles . . .”

               “We’ve got like twenty of those in the drawer over there,” Scott scoffed and gestured loosely towards the weapons cabinet. “Next problem.”

               “We’d have to let Richie out, at least for a little bit,” Kate said, flipping between pages. “Plus, it has to be spoken in the correct language. Xibalban is really difficult, lots of guttural sounds.” She bit her lip and went back to her original page. “Maybe we can—,”

               “You got this.” Seth said abruptly. He crossed his arms. “You survived a torture chamber of ancient snake monsters when you were barely street legal. This— _ritual_ , whatever you wanna call it— you got this in the bag. We’ll find what you need, set it up, and let you work your magic. Simple as that.”

Scott grinned, unable to help himself. He shrugged. “You kicked my ass pretty good. ‘M sure you’ll kick Richie’s just as well.”

Kate swallowed, tucking her hair over her shoulder and looked between the two boys, the book pressed tightly between her chest. She took a deep breath. “Yeah, alright, let’s do it. But we have to do everything right. Nothing can go wrong.”

Scott grinned wickedly and rubbed his hands together. “Nothing like the promise of a blood ritual to really start the day.”

* * *

_Fifteen Months After_

He had said there would be no funny business. He had even put a pillow in between the two of them to confirm it. He hadn’t gone out to drink that night either, nor taken anything from the motel mini-bar. He was stone-cold sober the night they both climbed into the same bed, after a mix up with the rooms. But she knew. She knew he hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours, a couple of minutes between hours, because she could hear it. Laying there, staring up at a discolored ceiling, she realized she probably could identify the specific sound of Seth Gecko’s snores. She knew the tempo of the rise and fall of his chest, the moment he dropped into a deeper sleep and the instant he awoke because that was the only consist sound across miles of desert and fifteen months of driving next to a single, familiar face. She knew him at his most vulnerable, because, truth be told, when Seth Gecko slept, he slept like the dead, and in that there was a certain amount of trust that she alone held. What that meant, if anything at all, was never something she would willingly dissect. Certain not here and now, when they were inches from each other and beyond paranoid they might actually touch. His breath was ragged, bumpy, uneasy, and all night he had not moved a muscle. That, as she knew, was not Seth Gecko when he slept.

However, she was tired. Exhausted, really. It had been a long day of driving after a particularly nasty run in with a culebra gas station. She checked the clock over her shoulder. It had been five hours since they had tried to deceive each other that this, whatever it was, wouldn’t be agonizing. Kate reached up and fingered her mother’s necklace. Her chest was tight, like the time she went to Six Flags with her family. Scott had demanded that they go on the Steel Eel, the one with a one hundred and fifty-foot drop. She never had been able to forget that panicked, ballooned feeling at the very peak of the drop. When she was looking straight down at the ground, after what seemed like hours of slowly chugging up to the breaking point. Scott had grabbed her hand, held her steady, and together they fell.

Something hot melted into her stomach, dropping low and running warm between her thighs. Suddenly she was jittery and her heart was racing.

The image of rolling Seth over and kissing him until he moaned through her teeth somehow punctured her memory and suddenly every nerve was alight.

Outside, a trashcan fell over in the rustling wind and both of them jumped. Neither one could now pretend they were asleep. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his profile, blurred in shadow from the light of the window on the other side.

With a growl of frustration, he sat up and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “That’s it. I’m sleeping on the floor.”

Kate laced her fingers on her stomach, breathing slowly. “Okay.” She hated how small her voice sounded.

Without another word, he took a pillow from the bed and the top layer comforter. “Good night, Kate.” He sounded almost angry.

               “Good night, Seth.”

* * *

Miraculously, some of the snow had melted the time they started moving that following afternoon. It was starting to get too cold to leave the truck out uncovered at night, so that morning, Seth had helped both Kate and Scott encase her blue Ford in a thick plastic wrapping. Since it was warmer, she argued, the walk into town would have been a pleasant one. Seth, ever the antagonist, wholeheartedly disagreed, but was eventually arm-wrestled into agreeing through logic: if the truck was put away, that meant they could take Seth’s trailer and put it in Kate’s shed up the road, free of charge and nosy townspeople.

Still he pouted in silence. Kate had wordlessly thrown him an extra scarf before following Scott out into the field.

Thirty-minutes later and quietly very grateful for the wool around his neck, Seth stopped with the Fuller siblings on the edge of town. Scott, ahead, was chatting with a large man, who was holding a small girl in a furry pink snowsuit on his hip.

               “That’s Pete Coleson, our local sheriff,” Kate said to him quietly as they approached the two men.

               “I come out of hiding for a week, and you toss me to the law?” Seth murmured back, his hands in his front jacket pockets. “That’s cold, Katie-cakes.”

He caught a peek of a grin on her face before she stretched out a hand in greeting to Coleson.

               “Morning, Pete. How’s Kathy?”

The large ginger beard shook as he let out a chuckle. “The old lady’s just fine. She’s at home today. It’s this little rugrat’s birthday today, and Mama wanted to set up a bit, so we’re just doing errands till then. Ain’t that right?”

The little form on his hip swiveled, giant green eyes and a shock of curly red hair framing two fat cheeks. “Mama?”

               “That’s right, kiddo, Mama’s home.” Pete said, turning to Kate. “Thanks again for that extra tire last month. Woulda been a pain to have to try and push the old wagon into town.”

Kate smiled, genuine and unhurried. “Of course. Just promise to bring more pie over sometime soon.”

The girl kicked and put a stubby finger in her slobbery mouth.

               “Happy Birthday, Hannah,” Scott said, his face bright. He scratched the tiny back comfortingly. She twisted and wrapped a gooey hand around one of his fingers, giggling.

               “She’s cute,” Seth said. Because that’s what you said about people’s babies, right?

Immediately, Coleson seemed to expand three sizes, his forehead furrowing. Seth was nearly inclined to take a step back, out of his reach.

               “Who’s this?”

Kate hovered incrementally between Seth and the ginger giant. “This is Seth. He’s a . . . family friend. Up from Texas. He’s staying with us.” As if to say, ‘he checks out’.

Pete deflated. Right then, Hannah started to cry, and his towering anger billowed away.

               “I think we’re going to head home. Fingers crossed Mom’s done. Kate, Scott . . . Seth . . .”

Coleson trudged down the road, Hannah sniffling in his arms. Seth immediately rounded on Kate.

               “What the hell! You can’t use my real name here. I’m still technically in the US and technically, I still robbed a bank in Kansas.”

               “Technically— you’re dead!” She snapped back at him. “We saw the news report, remember? As far as the US Court System is concerned, the Gecko Brothers are long dead!”

He frowned. He vaguely remembered a police broadcast, but that was the first time she had made pancakes on an induction cooker, so it was rather fuzzy.

               “Are you sure?”

Kate rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. “Yes! And for the record, I doubt anyone here has even heard of your little heist. I know that’s a devastating blow to your ego—,”

               “ _Oh my God_ , you two!” Scott huffed. “Can we please just go into town and get our shit already?”

Kate glared one more time before striding forward with purpose. “Fine, let’s go.”

Seth fell into step behind her, not entirely finished driving her crazy. “Yeah, Scott, you might want to get some disinfectant for your finger. That thing slobbered all over you—,”

She whipped around and slugged him in the shoulder.

* * *

The town was awake, jittery, and thriving. People walked in and out of stores, shops, holding brown bags of groceries, firewood, and new clothes. Children scampered in between long legs, earning yelps of irritation and displacement. Someone was up on a ladder stringing lights across the town square and an elderly man put up turkey stickers in his shop window. Far away someone was burning something sweet and the crunch, chatter, and jingle of change had its own tune. It was nothing like the ghost town Seth had wandered through several days ago.

               “Holy shit, did this place just pop up out of the ground?” Seth muttered and slid behind a woman to avoid being taken out by a large package in her arms.

               “This is like a spring day for us,” Scott told him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw someone out in shorts.”

Seth slowly shook his head. “You people are fucking weird.”

With Kate leading, the three turned out of the town square, back towards the road Seth came in on. They were about to turn down Grey street when Scott stopped.

               “I’m going to head over to the church real quick, okay? There’s some wooden lighters there that we need.”

Kate paused, oddly bristling, but she nodded. Seth raised a hand to him, and the younger Fuller took off further down the road. When Seth looked back, Kate was already halfway across the road. He took a few quick steps to catch up.

Off the main road, it was more quiet, less people. He fell in step with her easily enough.

               “So, what’s down here?”

               “My diner. I have to tell Marcus and Isabella to take some days off. Splitting a human body from a snake-lizard monster isn’t something I usually do on the weekends and I might need a few days recuperate.”

He nodded. Something then occurred to him and he paused, mid-stride, taking her elbow in his hand. Kate froze, her big eyes widening into his.

               “I don’t think I’ve said this yet, but thank you,” he murmured. “For what you’re doing for Richie. You were my last chance in hell, and I really didn’t think we’d get this far.”

He tried to smile the smile that has worked a thousand times before with her, just her, the one thing among others that they shared in a quiet slit between realities, in their junkyard of an escape. But here now, he was petrified it wouldn’t work because then that might mean, it really is gone— and without hope, Seth Gecko is a terrible man.

She sighed at him, through him, without anger or resentment or hatred. She just sighed, like she was tired of swimming against the current.

               “Thank you, Seth. It means a lot.” Kate looked back up at him, a smile of her own plastered to her face. But this one was tight-lipped and didn’t light up her brilliant eyes. She patted his gloved hand at her elbow, pushing him away with every touch of her finger tips. He dropped her and he suddenly realized how much physical space they had suddenly enclosed together. But then, she turned away, hands digging for keys again, and something moved right out from his chest and attached itself onto her back, the tie straining the farther she moved away. He caught up with her, feet frantic to pull his body back together, as she opened the Muenca Diner door.

They were barely a foot in when something blonde and tiny collided with Kate. It squealed.

               “KATE! Where have you been! We’re dying out here!”

Seth had to wait a moment to fully understand that Kate was not being attacked, but rather hugged by a teenager with braids. The two stopped spinning and the girl pulled back, her cheeks flushed. Kate was smiling. Beyond all odds, this fiery little thing brought her something like contentment.

               “Sorry, Izzy, I’ve just been busy. A lot’s come up lately and I had to . . . put out some fires.”

Isabelle, Izzy, made a face. She put a hand on her hip and scowled, much like a little sister would antagonize an older one. “Yeah? Like what, Ms. Doesn’t Answer Any of My Texts?”

Kate raised an eyebrow, pursing her lips, almost ashamed, and stepped away from the door way, revealing Seth behind her. Izzy’s mouth dropped open.

               “Iz, this is Seth. He’s an old friend and he’s recently come into town.”

Her light eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “ _You’re_ the hobo who rented out Sherman’s shed?”

Seth shrugged. “Guess that’d be me.”

               “Literally _no one_ said you were this h—,”

               “Ho-kay, Izzy,” Kate stepped in front of her line of sight, loosely grabbing her shoulders, “where is Marcus?”

Her head moved slightly, as though trying to peak around Kate. “He’s in the back,” she said slowly. “He hasn’t heard anything from you all day either . . .”

               “Isabelle, I swear I told you to clean off the bar twenty minutes ago!”

Suddenly, a tall, lanky man stepped through the red curtain in the back, dark blonde hair curly around his ears. He wore a white half-smock and he was wiping his hands, irritated, when he walked out of the kitchen. He froze when he saw Kate.

               “Oh, hullo, Kate.”

Kate smiled, again tight-lipped. “Hey, Marcus, thanks for keeping the place on its feet while I was gone.”

He shrugged, the whole movement bringing his body up. “Can’t be assistant manager to a place that doesn’t exist. You comin’ back into work today?”

Kate shook her head. “A family thing’s come up, and I hate to do this before the holiday rush—,”

               “Oh, he’s family now? You said he was just a friend.” Izzy leaned against the front counter, a green sucker in her mouth, and looking devious. “Marcus, meet Seth. Seth, Marcus. They’re just good friends.”

Seth suddenly remembered why he didn’t like children, or teenagers for that matter. Marcus’s gaze left Kate and found Seth, as though he had suddenly popped into existence. Marcus blinked.

               “Hey, man.”

               “Hey.”

He was broad shouldered, but not by much. The dude had muscle, but not a lot. Seth had always been quick on his feet, but the wing span was definitely something to watch out for—

His brain automatically had begun to categorize how to systematically take down and destroy this random resident. Seth swallowed and crossed his arms. By the way Marcus was staring, Seth was fairly sure he also undergone some mental math.

Izzy was grinning wickedly.

               “So, look, Marcus, I need you and Isabelle to run the place for a bit while I’m gone. Seth has family in town and it’s kind of a private matter, so—,”

               “Do you need any help, Kate?” Marcus asked seriously, his eyes never leaving Seth.

               “Nah, I think Seth’s got this one.” Izzy popped the sucker out of her mouth.

Kate hurled some sort of look at her, but there was no way Seth was going to lose this staring contest first.

               “Marcus, can you do that?”

               “Yeah,” he sniffed. “I’ll keep the diner going until you’re ready. You just take your time. But you know if you need anything, call.”

Kate huffed. “Yes, I will. Thank you.” She turned and grabbed Seth so harshly by the bicep, there might have been nails involved. “Izzy. I’ll call your mother and tell her where you are.”

               “Please do.” She waved three fingers at Seth as Kate practically hauled him out of the diner. She pushed him into the street and slammed the door behind her. She marched forward, not waiting for him to follow.

               “Holy shit, you’re unbelievable!”

               “What? The guy was a prick!”

               “So were you! I should have just taken out the rulers then, and saved everybody some trouble!”

               “Please,” Seth scoffed. “I’ve been in a prison yard fight with a guy that was a hundred pounds heavier. Winter Soldier back there doesn’t scare me.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “I didn’t bring you in there to have a macho-pissing contest with my assistant manager.”

               “Where did you ever find that jerk-off anyway? The Mighty Ducks meet their quota on goalies?”

Kate pulled her scarf up over her cheeks, Seth fuming far too hotly to notice the pink climbing up her throat. “He asked me out about a month after I got here.” Seth froze. “He made me dinner and I realized he really could cook, and I needed a head chef. It just kind of fell into place after that.”

               “What ‘just kind of fell into place’? Did you say yes?”

Kate paused, her eyes narrowing at him. “Yes, I did. And you know what, I had an amazing time, and we drank wine, and afterwards we made out on his couch.”

               “Oh. So, then, are you . . . going to see . . . him again?”

Kate was still scowling. She clenched her jaw. “No.”

               “Why?”

She swallowed, her cheeks pink again from the cold. She dropped eye contact and stormed away towards the main square. “Bad leverage.”

               “Oh.”

Her figure paused a few feet ahead of him and she audibly sighed. A wind picked up and Seth’s scarf flapped in the breeze.

               “Okay, look, we went on one date but we never made out. I just said that because you were pissing me off.”

               “But did you want to? Make out with him, I mean?”

She pressed a woolen palm to her forehead. “No. I was too short and I knew it would be uncomfortable. Bad leverage.”

He came to stand by her. She still had her hand pushing against the bridge of her nose. She opened one eye to him.

               “So . . . I’m a hobo now?” Seth said. “Real nice, Fuller.”

Kate grinned and dropped her hand.

               “Better than some of the other things I could call you.”

* * *

_Sixteen Months After_

“Do you really think this is going to work?”

               “It sure as shit better work. Or else someone’s getting an ass kicking so good, they won’t sit for a goddamn week.”

He exited the highway, driving closer and closer to the large sprawl of stone and brick buildings in the distance. Her stomach churned. This was the closest they had come to a populated area in months. Months of sleepy towns folk, of by-standers that never really looked twice, of motel managers who didn’t ask questions as long as ample money was given. Here, things would be different. Here, in Mexico City, there were televisions, and watchful police, and maybe even wanted signs, blaring his face and the face of his undead brother. Kate picked at her necklace, anxiously looking out the window of their purposefully non-discreet car. This was where you could get fake passports, Seth’s contact said. Seedy folk ran with seedy folk and it wasn’t hard to get the right intel. What a strange thing, though, that it had taken them both this long to consider crossing the border again. In the back of her mind, she always said it was because she hoped by some chance she would run into Scott again. But guiltily, she also accepted that she hadn’t been given the opportunity to look very hard . . . nor had she asked. Ask her driving partner, and it was because grief does weird things to people. And this, this secret charged energy that was passed between glances, and thoughts, and light, guiding touches, was weird.

               “What are the chances we’re going to run into a culebra here?”

Seth shrugged, trying to merge into a lane that would take them into the heart of the city. “We don’t go out at night, we stay away from crowds, and we’ll make it out of here like—,”

               “Paul Newman?”

He grinned. “Yep.”

               “You can’t keep saying that until a job one day actually does go _that_ smoothly.” She shook her head and glared at him out of the corner of her eye. “Plus, you still owe me a freakin’ toaster.”

Seth’s hand came up, covering from her cheek to her temple, and pushed her playfully in the face, his lips pursed. She shoved him off, grinning. “Shut up, you little crime bandit. Find us a place to stay for the night.”

It took them over an hour to finally get through traffic and into a small hotel near El Templo Mayor. Night was settling, but crowds were making their way into the street, holding brightly colored flowers and large papier-mâché figures on sticks. A little boy in a skeleton costume raced in front of them as they approached the hotel, nearly missing Seth.

               “Little punk.”

Kate headed for the front desk, her Spanish now far surpassing the weak conversational she had in school. Seth paced the lobby, as if scoping out all possible exits. She asked for a single room, _dos camas_ , and then questioned the activity outside.

               “ _El día de los muertos, señora, por supuesto_ _.”_

Kate’s face lit up. Seth came up from behind and took the room card off the counter. “What’d he say?”

               “It’s the day of the dead, Seth. A huge Mexican tradition.” She blinked, a realization dawning sharply. “That means it’s October 31st. Seth, we’ve been out here for more than a year.”

He watched her with careful eyes, as if expecting her to yell or cry about that fact. “Yeah, crazy how time flies when you’re having fun.”

Her eyes slid from a blank stare into his. He was grinning softly. Her heart was suddenly tight, as every month she spent not looking for Scott, staying by this criminal’s side, and slowly cutting a path away from everyone and everything she knew, weighed down on her. Something had changed between them and she wasn’t sure when, or why, or if everything was in her head, and this was just a better stint for him than jail, because at the end of the day, if he asked, she would have jumped because that’s what trust meant and she trusted him to keep them safe more than anything— but her father had trusted her to keep Scott safe and look where it got them.

               “Is that what we’re doing?” She asked quietly. Her gaze dropped to the marble floor, something rising from her chest into her eyes. “Are we just having fun?”

Kate watched his feet shuffle forward in her vision. She felt his broad hand lay on her shoulder and managed to lift her eyes. There was something frantic in the way he looked at her, as if there were too many things to be said at once. “Kate, that’s not what I—,”

The manager returned with the pool key. She stepped backwards out of his grasp, took the key, her bag, and turned without another word towards the elevator.

At ten o’clock, the room phone rang and it was Seth’s contact. He said to meet in Zócalo, the main square of the city, in half an hour with the agreed amount. Seth slipped on his jacket, over the gun peeking out of his waistband, and Kate stood as well.

               “Not a chance, princess,” he said without even looking up at her.

               “Haven’t I proven myself by now?” She checked the chamber of the derringer before tossing on a lighter leather coat.

               “No.”

               “No, what?”

               “No, you’re not coming.” He moved and she blocked the door, her arms crossed.

               “You said it yourself, night is the worst time for us to be out. And the streets have gotta be filled with people by now.”

His eyes flashed, a dark anger rising. “There are culebras and then there are these people, Kate. You have no idea what kind of shit they run with. What they do to white girls in the wrong part of town—,”

               “Like what? Kill me? Kinda already been there and done that.”

               “It’s not the same—,” he snarled through gritted teeth.

               “I’m the only back up you’ve got, _Gecko_ , and whether you like it or not, I’m coming.”

Seth hissed, closing his eyes for a minute as if restraining himself from tossing her in the bathroom and locking the door. He took one step and he was in her face, a finger raised, warning. “You stay at my side every single moment. You walk with that gun up your sleeve, and someone so much as breathes at you wrong, you blow their heads off. Got it?”

When he got like this, it was better to agree to the compromise then try and argue. She stepped aside and took the gun out of her pocket, sliding it up the forearm of her jacket. “Fine. Can’t wait to be labeled a criminal for manslaughter.”

He strode past her and opened the door without looking back. “Better a criminal than dead.”

Outside, the city was vibrant. Singing. Dancing. Hand-held sparklers dancing on ropes and in the hands of walking giants on stilts. Giant floats depicting lizards and dragons and enormous pigs rumbled through the streets, leading the procession. Children screamed and scattered, trying to catch the candy falling from the floats. A band played light music somewhere in the distance, the voices and songs of the people their unique tune.

Seth stormed down the street, his gaze set straight ahead. The crowd pushed them shoulder to shoulder and the moment that contact separated, he paused, as though convinced she had suddenly been snatched off the side of the road. Seth barreled through couples, groups, lovers holding hands, blatantly ignoring their remarks and glares. Kate barely had time to toss and apologetic look over her shoulder before Seth drove them through another wave of party-goers. The distinctive smell of alcohol was everywhere, along with fresh bread, some meat, and something sweet. If she thought she could convince him to wait just a minute, she would. She had never seen such colors, such a dance of movement and bodies and laughter and flags and dresses and suits and dark painted faces. Beyond them, someone was performing a puppet show with shimmering streamers.

Kate smiled, unable to stop herself, and she glanced up through the crowd of on-lookers to the puppet show. But one figure was not watching the happy dancers. He watched her. The streamers spun and twirled and lit up the dark night, and his yellow eyes flashed in the light. In the flickering darkness, his fangs glistened.

She grabbed his forearm, jerking them to a stop.

“Seth,” she whispered.  “They found us. I don’t know how but they found us.”

His hand slipped down into hers as he caught her line of sight. The culebra grinned wickedly and a forked tongue slithered out from between two scaled lips. He waved.

               “Oh, fuck that. Not tonight.” He pulled her forward, driving back into the crowd, his free hand sneaking up to the gun at his back. “Not when we’re this fucking close.”

Above them a bang of fireworks erupted into the sky. Everyone was looking upward, gleeful, and Seth took the opportunity to break out into a jog. He tugged her along, Kate running right beside him. They veered off into the dark, near the large cathedral, and Seth pulled her against a wall, a hand over her mouth. He held a single finger to his lips, eyes locked with hers, then moved around the corner. Satisfied they were not followed, he stepped back.

Her chest was heaving, her ears ringing. Her gun hand was shaking.

Seth looked at his watch, then down to the steps of the cathedral. He turned back to Kate, his eyes wide.

               “Can you please stay here? The guy is going to be right over there in a minute and all I have to do is give him the money and we can get outta here.”

               “Seth, I’ve have to—,”

               _“Please_ ,” he pleaded. “ _Please_ , just don’t fight me on this one.”

               “I’m counting to one hundred and fifty and if you’re not back, I’m coming looking for you.” She said fiercely.

His expression softened. No longer fearful and panicked. Not as though they were on the run for their lives. And then Seth reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. As though he had done it a hundred times before and would do it one hundred times again. “Wouldn’t expect anything less.”

The terrible thing in her chest that she had tried to keep hidden in the lobby suddenly burst and her nails ran up the stone wall behind her as her fingers closed into fists.

               “Seth . . .”

The sound was pitiful. She never before had said his name that way, from a feeling that went all the way down to her toes, and instantaneously she feared she never would be given the chance again. In the darkness, he swayed, only half of his face lit up from the fireworks. Slowly, unhurriedly, Seth reached forward and took her small chin between his thumb and forefinger. He rubbed the bottom of her lip hesitantly, stroking, memorizing every line. Her mouth fell open, desperate to catch him in her lips. He suddenly looked drunk, hazed, out of focus, the tenderness of his expression blurring his sharp features, erasing the dull lines to elated curves. He blinked and to her, it seemed like a thousand years.

               “I will always find you, Kate. I promise.”

               “I know.” Something else spoke for her, her own voice lost somewhere between his chest and hers, on the lapel of his jacket, in the duffel bag tucked near her boots, between the invisible string of their guns. “I will always look for you. Promise.”

With a breath, Seth stepped back. Looking away, he cocked his gun. His shoulders hunched, he strode off towards the cathedral, as if doing anything else would be disastrous.

Kate raised a trembling hand and covered her mouth, a sob nearly escaping her lips.

And when he returned, and return he did, he was carrying two separate brown paper bags. One he told her not to open or look inside of, but the second, he took out two small decorated skulls. He called them Calaveras, and leading her by the hand, they went to the cathedral together. They sat on the steps and bit into the sugary dessert. They watched the parade continue, watched the people stomp around with glee and sparklers streaming in their hands, watched the fireworks explode vibrantly, and somehow, everything was okay.

* * *

When he finished chopping the rest of the firewood, Seth came back inside and found Scott sitting in the middle of the living room surrounded by maps, pencils, a few old books, and three different kind of metal compasses.

               “What’s all this?”

Scott picked up the calculator to his left and punched in some numbers then drew a line on one of the maps. “In order for this ritual to work, it has to be in a specific place at a specific time. These ancients might not have had indoor plumbing, but they knew how to chart the fuck outta some stars.”

               “I’m guessing they didn’t have any TI-84s with them either,” Seth said, gesturing to the calculator as he took off his gloves.

               “Yeah, well, I don’t exactly have the time to be trained as an Aztec scribe so I kinda gotta start from scratch.”

               “That’s clearly going to take a while—,”

               “I’m sorry, do you know how to use this?” Scott held up a small compass, twiddling its long legs between his fingers. “Didn’t think so . . . get me a beer. This is probably going to take all night.”

Seth raised both eyebrows at him. “You know, there was a time when you were a little scared of me. Let’s go back to that time. I like that.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Just get me a damn beer.”

When Seth came back, he cracked two bottles open, handing one to Scott, and holding another close by as he flopped down on the couch.

               “Cheers, buddy.” Seth took a long sip. Still better than Dos Equis. “Are you even old enough to drink? Or is Kate going to come down here and kick my ass?”

               “I’m only two years younger than her, dumbass.” He drew a circle on the map between his legs and typed something into the calculator. “I’ve been legal for two years.”  

               “Where is Big Sis, by the way?”

               “Upstairs. She’s practicing her Xibalban.”

               “Wasn’t quite aware she’s now trilingual . . .”

Scott sighed and drank from his bottle. “She’s not. Technically. It’s like when all starts, something else takes over. I’ll never forget it. One minute, she’s struggling, trying to read the page and perform the ritual, and all of a sudden . . . it’s like she’s got the damn thing memorized by heart.”

Seth swallowed, scratching at the label with his thumbnail. “And this guy, Altair, taught her how to do that?”

               “He said it was always inside of her. Like she always had the power to do this, but just needed to be shown the way.”

               “What the fuck does that mean?” Seth snapped. “She’s just Kate, not some desert witchdoctor.”

Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. And neither does Kate. Nothing in Freddie’s old stuff ever really talked about this stuff. I guess even culebras saw Alazar as a myth.”

“So, what exactly is going to happen to my brother?” Seth leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Soul-splitting, okay, but what the fuck does that actually mean?”

“The books say this was used for cases of possession and disturbance. I don’t know what’s more disturbing than some guy turning into Killer Croc. I think, if it all goes right, Kate will be able to isolate Richie’s soul and pull him to the surface. The other body should just . . . melt away.”

Seth sat back, a dark look on his face. He pulled another sip of beer. “Yeah, kid, it’s the ‘if’ that gets me. I’ve spent most of my life avoiding ‘if’s and this one sucks all kind of ass. And we’re walking right into it.”

He stood, the bottle swinging by his thigh. Scott looked up.

               “Where are you going?”

               “To check on the reason I’m here on the first place.”

Seth grabbed another beer from the freezer, his coat off the peg, and went out to the cellar. He yanked open the doors with a huff, and eased down into the darkness. Unlike their bunker, there was no heat pumping into the dark underground and without the sunlight, it was at least ten degrees colder. Seth saw his breath cloud up in front of him when he turned on the gas light hanging on the wall.

Ahead of him, the white meat freezer glimmered in the low light, exactly where they had left it. Seth stared at it through the barbed wire for a while, before taking another mouthful from the bottle. He sat down on the steps and held the other bottle out towards his brother, wherever he was in the darkness.

               “This one’s for you, pal.” He plunged the bottle into the cold dirt beside his feet. “It’ll be cold and waiting for you when you get back.”

_Get back. From where?_

Seth scoffed to no one in particular and, realizing his beer was almost gone, scowled and immediately wished for something stronger. He finished the last sip and dropped the bottle near his shoulder, leaning back, arms stretched back on the steps.

               “This is some dumb shit we’re in, you know that? Snake people, ancient soul-consuming temples, a really pissed-off little gunslinger— that much I could almost handle. But this,” Seth chuckled, shaking his head, “this shit is the real deal. Real chip off the old block . . . We gotta somehow split your soul in half, Richard, do you hear that? With a few blood candles here and there, some fire, and a little how-to-textbook, Katie-cakes up there is going to perform a ritual that releases people from _demons_. Un-fucking-believable.”

Seth leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. “I don’t know if she’s ready for something like that.” He dropped his head. “I don’t know if I am. To let her . . . put herself through that, for me. For you.” He sniffed. “I told you that the Gecko Brothers would ride again after all of this was over, and we are— it’s just . . . when will enough be enough? When are we going to pay . . . for the things we’ve done?”

His voice broke, words failing, and he glanced forward to the meat freezer, neither an answer or a sign coming to relieve him of his burdens. The shadows flickering in the darkness were silent, as silent as the grave. He interlocked his fingers together, holding them against the shaking and the cold.

               “She’s not a little girl anymore,” he said loudly, as though to keep the shadows at bay. “She can take care of herself. She doesn’t need me or anyone else protecting her . . .” His voice dropped. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not scared for her. Nothing bad is going to happen to her, not this time, because I won’t allow it. Not this time or anywhere else. Because this time, things are going to be different, Richie— Goddamn it, things are going to be different— I’m going to keep both of you this time and I—,”

He looked up and swallowed. The meat freezer was still stationary, in the darkness. He thought of Kate, her pink cheeks, her hands, and he knew he would always be selfish when it came to her.

Seth stood and turned off the gas lamp. The room plunged into darkness and he turned, trudging back up the stairs. This time, he would keep the promise he made. 

* * *

At one thirty that morning, Scott stumbled into the kitchen, clutching a map in his hand. Seth, who couldn’t sleep, looked up from his seat at the kitchen table, and Kate, who couldn’t sleep either and had been making a pot of coffee, turned around to her brother.

               “I got it.” Scott breathed. He smoothed the large map onto the table, Seth sliding out of the way. “Margot’s field. A thirty-minute drive from here, just North.”

               “Are you sure, Scott?” Kate asked as she came to look at what he found, pushing her hair behind her ear. Her eyes were rimmed dark and the cotton long-sleeved shirt hugged her body loosely. Seth eyed her, wondering how long she laid awake before accepting sleep wasn’t going to come.

Scott nodded. “As sure as I’m ever going to be. The moon is going to be in perfect alignment at that spot, right at midnight. It’s secluded, away from any major towns or people. Nothing to run in on us and nothing to get in the way.”

Kate chewed her bottom lip. Scott looked just as exhausted, but his eyes had hope in them.

               “The full moon is in two days,” Seth said. “Can we do it by then?”

Kate sighed. She was barefoot and her hair was mussed. But her eyes were clear and focused. “Yeah. We can. In two days, we’re gonna knock the shit out of this.”


	4. The Last One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it, the grand finale! To those of who reviewed, thank you so much! It made my week. Just a couple of things:  
> 1) The beginning of this chapter dips into R -rated territory, as we finally see what happened in the beach bungalow.  
> 2) The italicized quote at the beginning about war is from the Bible, Romans. Paraphrased, but I think it worked nicely.  
> 3) This is the last major chapter. The last chapter is basically a fluffy mess. Can't help myself. 
> 
> Thanks again!

**Chapter Four: The Last One**

_Twenty-Five Months After_

Somehow, they ended up on a beach. Farther than they thought and closer than they ever really hoped to be. It was summer again, and stiflingly hot, as always. But at night, there was relief. The cool light of the moon was a secret watcher, one that softened gazes and eased the worried muscles, and turned a blind eye to the fitful examinations of the day. The moon was hopeful, hopeful in that all things lasted and when the night was quiet, the waves rushed in gentle gratitude, all the secrets held too tight were at peace. For just a brief moment, the air, charged with terrible and infinite ideas about what should be and what was, and about what family or friendship or being in painful, blinding love really meant, the air was calmed and the moon steered away prying eyes. Every second was a gift because the cruel admissions of daylight couldn’t be heard and bright things were watched by the moon and the eyes of those who wished to see, finally could.

Seth watched her, crouched before him, her focus on her next best move in their game of Janga. One leg wrapped across her, the other she used as a table on which she rested her head, her fingers were clasped in front of her nose as she studied. Her hair was sticky and salty from hours spent rolling in the ocean water, and she tugged it slightly as she looped it over her shoulder, not breaking her concentration. A breeze flickered in from the open door into their tiny rented bungalow and the white cotton dress flapped at her ankles.

               “You’re leering.” She muttered.

The thoughtful gaze broke and he grinned. “Am not. You’re just taking forever. Accept defeat, Fuller, and save yourself the embarrassment.”

They had shut the electricity off hours ago, the light and sound attracting all sorts of bugs. The moon, shimmering on the edge of the water, poured into their one room, illuminating everything to a startling degree. The sun never really went down, only changed color and intensity.

Smirking, Kate poked one of the lower bricks and it tumbled out the other side. The tower swayed but it did not fall.

Seth puffed out air from his cheeks. “Risky move. As Uncle Eddie always said, rather be lucky than smart.”

               “I’m plenty smart.”

He grabbed at one of the side bricks. “Pride cometh before . . .” The stack rotated and toppled over, little wooden bricks spraying everywhere.

               “The fall,” Kate finished and grinned.

               “Well, shit, guess the next round’s on me.”

Seth stood, his black shirt and boxers rising as he leaned against the bed to get up. Kate signed and turned her head flat on her knee towards the open door. Another breeze tumbled in and her toes were suddenly cold.

She didn’t look back as he came and sat down next to her, the clinking of ice in glass nearby.

               “Everything okay?”

She watched the rise and fall, climb and break of the waves. She thought of the earlier afternoon as she ran head on into those waves, nearly screaming in delight, and he followed after and they swam and spat and kicked, and it felt more and more like a dream with every passing moment.

               “Kate? Where’d you go?”

She turned her head to look at him. His forehead dipped in confusion, worry.

               “Are we really going back?”

               “To the states?”

She nodded in a quick movement. Seth scratched the back of his head.

               “Yeah. Right? We’ve got the passports. We got enough money to get back over the border. Makes sense.”

               “But where are we going to go?”

The syllable, _we_ , made him look away. Something was blooming within her, almost making it hard to see.

               “I dunno, Kate. But we’ll figure it out.”

She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his chest and pulled him tightly to her. Her nose rubbed against his prickly jaw, then against his throat. A noise came from his chest and it sounded like her name, but that only made her hold tighter.

               “I want to bring Scott home, Seth. I have to make sure he’s okay.”

He smelled like salt and sunlight and the only tether she had in this world. She dug her fingers into his shirt, bristling his skin, and she closed her eyes. In the silence of the distant rolling waves, she heard his heart thrum like a battle drum, and resigned herself to the simple truth that this was the only heartbeat she ever wanted to hear.

Delicately, curiously, he put his hands on her back, pinky finger touching thumb, as if he was trying to count the size of her back in his hands. Slowly, they slid forward and he held her, as tight as anyone before or after had held her, and was more intoxicating than lying half-naked on a warm beach with the sunlight streaming down. It was more engulfing, more infinite than she thought capable of two humans tied on a single connection. And they were just hugging. Just holding each other against a world that was trying to drown them before they even reached the shore.

She nosed his collar, where his skin and shirt met.

               “But I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave. Not yet.”

She aimed to carve out a spot in his chest, just for her, where in the midst of everything, she had found a home.

_In a world full of sinful people, war is inevitable_.

Kate lifted her head and pressed her lips to his pulse point. The noise escaped him again, his fingers digging into her ribs. Opening her mouth, her tongue flattened softly, and her free hand went into his hair, pulling slightly.

               “Kate—,” his voice was hoarse, like he had been waiting his whole life just to say that one word.

               “I want this,” she whispered into his neck. “Please— I—,”

He pushed her back, the heat of his chest gone from her skin like a slap in the face, she almost cried in anguish— but a hand came to her neck, his fingers wrapping to her hairline and thumb up against her cheek, and he was kissing her. His lips fell into hers with such a crushing force, something in her chest broke because _he felt it too_. He felt this wild thing she could barely contain for God knows how long. It was flying from her fingers and every time it escaped, he was there to hold it for her.

She gripped his hips with her hands, his fingers driving deeply into her hair as though he had known hours, days, months before of where he wanted to put them. But they were twisted, half entangled on the floor in front of the bed. His hand flew to the back of her knee, pulling, and there— she slid forward over him, into his lap, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, the warm skin of his neck pressing against her forearms. His hands jerked her forward and she gasped, his hardness suddenly pressing exactly where she needed it. He moaned, and cupped her jaw with his mouth. He moved to her earlobe, the skin underneath, then back to her lobe. He bit her between his teeth, and without control, her hips pressed down into his lap, sending a shockwave through them both.

               “Do you want this?” He murmured against her skin at her throat. He was panting.

She nodded rapidly, her chest against his, and neck tucked under his mouth.

               “Gotta hear you say it.”

She couldn’t formulate words or thoughts or gestures clear enough to express the _agony_ she would feel if he stopped. If they stopped. If they pulled away and went back to the safety of their lie. Their wretched lie that no longer applied because they were _this_ , something else, and nothing mattered anymore.

She put her hand on the mattress next to his head, steadying herself, and swung once-twice-three times with her hip, grinding on top of him. His head fell forward onto her shoulder by the second motion, and let out a moan so deep it threatened to split her in two.

               “ _Fuck, baby_ . . .”

               “Seth, please—,”

Both of his hands scooped under her thighs, pulling her to him, and he launched forward onto his feet. Half of her expected him to throw her on the bed and ride her till she screamed, but when he laid her down, gently, thoughtfully, every motion considered, everything inside her fell silent and the hot fire in her belly simmered, waiting impatiently.

His eyes watching every twitch in her face, he lifted her calf to his mouth and open-mouth kissed it. The other hand rested curiously on her pelvis, rubbing casual circles with his thumb, rushing the folds of her cotton dress. He moved up her leg, tongue darting out to lick the curve of her knee. She fisted the sheets. He bent forward and bit lightly on her thigh, his thumb pressing deeply into her over her cotton panties. In tandem, he rolled his thumb and bit and released the skin on her thigh. Her brain short-circuited and she panted raggedly. She shut her eyes to keep her hips from shaking.

               “Talk to me, Katie.”

She forced her eyes open, spiraling quickly into those heavy-lidded, darkly rimmed eyes. His fingers ran from her knee, down the side of her thigh, and squeezed her ass. He was overwhelming.

               “I—I— I can’t breathe—,”

               “Shhh, okay then, we’ll stop.” He slid her leg off his shoulder and leaned forward between her legs. He took her clenched fists from the mattress, and kissed her wrists until she relaxed.

               “What do you want me to do to you?”

She whimpered, the straight rush to where his thumb had been moments ago almost painful.

_Everything. Nothing. Consume me_.

               “Be gentle.”

               “How far do you want to go?”

               “I want to go everywhere with you.”

She sat up slightly, wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him into her mouth. He moved forward, one leg coming up to the mattress beside her hip to press her back down. She broke the kiss when she laid her head back down. They stared for a while, her finger nails rising and falling against the skin of his tattooed arm. Could he too feel this line that shot out of her heart into his? How could he not? How could he sit there and look like that and not feel the pulse between them. She crawled backwards to the head of the bed, out from under him. She unbuttoned the first clasp of her cotton dress, her heart pounding against her ribs, and looked to him.

               “Be gentle with me, Seth.”

His dark eyes taking in every inch of her skin, he moved forward and she slipped one hand up under his shirt, tugging it until it rolled forward off his back. It roughed his hair up as it went and she almost giggled.

               “What?” He mused and tossed the shirt to the floor.

               “Nothing. Just kiss me.”

And he did. One hand cupping her mouth to him, the other lazily, distractedly, unbuttoning each lacy button across her chest. She didn’t realize she had forgotten to put a bra back on after her shower until the cool night air hit her chest and Seth Gecko groaned. He ran a thumb under the line of her breast, sending frizzy shocks to her brain.

               “This okay?” he murmured into her skin. She nodded briefly and he took her raised nipple into his mouth. He sucked and Kate’s heart missed a beat. She gasped, arching her back into his open, pleading mouth and she ran her nails down his back, as if punishing him for not doing this sooner, or doing it now when she couldn’t think straight. Her thighs clenched around his hips and his head drove deeper into her chest, tongue drawing up the sweat that had rolled down under her breast. His wide hand that had carried her, pushed her, helped her, led her, saved her, palmed her other breast and massaged, praising her and the goosebumps littering her skin.

He kissed her sternum and she pulled him on top of her.

               “Kate—,” he was warning. Warning to pump the breaks because they were careening dangerously close to the edge. That’s all they had ever been doing; approaching the edge, but chickening out and lurching away. For Kate, pulling away this last time would be more painful than crashing at the bottom.

She raised her legs around his hips and by nature, he knew where to go. She put his worried, ragged face between her hands and made him look her in the eye.

               “Show me. Show me what it’s going to feel like.”

He was heavy on top of her, a weight that somehow been there her whole life and never knew what to do with it. He was on his elbow over her, one hand sprawled out near her head.

               “Kate, if you don’t want this—,”

She raised her hips, both of them separated by thin cotton, and they gasped together. Coming down as he went up, and eye met eye. She rubbed his bristled jaw with her thumb and his forehead dropped against hers.

               “It’s going to feel like this—,”

He rutted slowly, dragging himself across her center, and she moaned, fingers clamping down on his cheeks.

               “It’s going to feel just like that, but everywhere.”

Seth went again, agonizingly slow, his breathe billowing down her neck, her chest, tightening her nipples again. His hips rolled and she saw stars.

He swallowed, breathing heavily. “I can’t keep this up forever, princess—,” he chuckled weakly. “You’re going to be the death of me.” His voice was thick, grumbling. He dropped onto both elbows and kissed both sides of her temple, then her eyelids, then chastely kissing her lips. She rubbed her calf against his thigh and almost laughed at how hairy it was. If she could laugh. If she could do anything but slowly pick apart the sensations radiating from between her legs. One simple conscious thought remained.

More.

She gazed at him from under her eyelashes.

_Mine._

               “Seth, I’m okay. I want this. _I want you_.” 

He ran a finger from her hairline to her chin. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

               “So be gentle.”

He nodded and lowering his hand, waiting for everything to stop, he dipped one finger around the side of her underwear and pulled down. He leaned off her to slide them passed her knees, and over her toes. She unwound herself the wrapping of her dress and looked up to him, hand pressed over his heart. “This is what I want.” She reminded him softly. “If it’s not what you want, then—,”

Seth held her hand to him and kissed her so languidly, so deeply, she thought of waves, rolling her out to the ocean. A quick search in the bedside nightstand yielded a plastic protection and swiftly, while her senses were still buzzed, her lips still warm, he slipped it on, and dragged his own shorts off. He once again picked up her chin between his forefinger and thumb, making sure she understood.

               “This is absolutely what I want, Kate. Never been more sure of anything in my life.”

               “Me too.” She wrapped her hands around the back of his neck, her skin twitching and still all at the same time. Her toes curled as he fell in between her hips and steadied them both. He planted a hand by her head and the other held her shoulder.

               “Open up a little bit.” She bit her lip as she complied.

               “Talk to me, the whole time, alright? Tell me if it hurts.”

She nodded and he lowered himself in. She hissed, the stretching painful but something bubbling up under her heart.

               “Too much?”

She swallowed, and thrashed her head. “Don’t stop—,”

A little more and Seth groaned, deep-throat, dropping his head onto her forehead. _“Fuck, Katie_ , I—,”

               “I said don’t stop.”

He dipped forward and Kate made a sound that was unlike anything she had ever made before. He gripped her shoulder, gasping, and he fisted the sheet. He rolled them forward again, moving, rolling, bending and she blanked. On everything. On who she was, where they were, how they got there, what came next, what followed them behind, what her own damn name was— as every sense within her screamed his name.

Sweat sprouted on her hairline and she felt it rise on his skin on the back of his neck. He dropped, shifting their angles, and she scratched his back, the new spot relinquishing her hold on anything that wasn’t immediately sealing their skin together. His lips scrambled at her throat, biting and sucking with the rise and fall of his hips, the flow of his back.

She said something, his name, words and phrases that made sense months ago, and were unheard of now. He was muttering his own lines of appraisal, of prayer, of appreciation that this was the moment she decided that all of this was real. She tucked her face up under his chin and kissed him, kissed him until she made his brains unspool, like his hips were undoing her in entirety.

The pressure was building below her pelvis and she gasped, open mouthed, at the sensation.

               “Shh, baby, you’re doing fine.” He stroked her neck, pumping slowly, drawn out. “Almost—almost there.”

               “Seth—,” She drove her fingers between her shoulder and his hand and squeezed tight. “Look at me.”

His pupils expanded like a dark hood. He kissed her and she broke, air and strength collapsing and _i can’t hold on_

Seth rolled once more and everything, light, darkness, Seth, not-Seth, this thing too great to name, spilled into her and she crumbled, into a heady mess of curls, sweat, and a humming body. He toppled down onto her, panting, exhausted, and consumed.

The space in between her legs was vibrating and every atom within her was oozing and relaxed and basking in his warmth. As if he knew she was thinking of him, only of him, he lifted his head off her sweat-stained chest.

               “Kate, I—,”

She kissed him, not ready for her name to be heard, not ready to speak to him. Not sure what came after this, nor what to do now. Now that he was everything.

* * *

The sun set below the tree line across the white field and evening fell on the little Alaskan town. Seth watched the sky break into a heavy red from the backdoor of the Fuller home. Tonight was the night and come hell or high water, something was changing. Seth fully expected both.

A small hand touched his shoulder, shaking him from dark thoughts. Her green eyes were determined, her mouth set, but Seth could sense her fear. Her worry. Not unlike his own.

               “Scott’s in the cellar, cutting down the barbed wire.” She removed her hand and gloved both of them in thick leather gloves. “Are you ready?”

               “Are you?”

She paused and looked back up at him. It was a thought that had been building for days now, something he never really gave much thought to because of the potential consequences, because she wouldn’t want it, coming from him. But here she was, in front of him, after all the terrible things he had done and they had done together, and she was fighting a new battle for him—

He cleared his throat and slipped his jacket on. “Sorry, dumb question.”

               “It’s okay. I’m scared too.” She half-smiled, as though commenting on the bizarre reality they were slipping back into. Seth stared.

This thought was that he wanted to kiss her, to strength her, to taste peppermint on her lips, and somehow he’d be stronger too. _Kate always made him stronger_. Always better. He hadn’t felt like himself in years, and here, in her warm living room, a slippery anxiousness had been lifted and he could breathe in through his nose, and out through his mouth, and the world was slowing down its disastrous spin.

               “Feels weird, right, going back to all of this?” Seth said and pulled on his own gloves.

               “Never thought I’d willingly ever read from a book of Xilbalban magic, but hey, here we are.” Kate slipped her hat over her head and grabbed the flashlight from the couch. She handed him his flashlight and they both checked to make sure they worked.

               “Seth, look, I have to tell you something.”

               “Yeah?”

               “If this doesn’t work . . . if we can’t save Richie . . .”

He reached forward and rubbed her bicep. “Hey, c’mon, don’t talk like that. We’re gonna be fine—,”

               “If we’re not, Seth,” her big eyes caught him under their spotlight and he froze. “ _If_ . . . I just want to apologize now. I’m sorry, for whatever may come.”

They stared at each other, her face heavy, before he blinked and looked down. “Ain’t nothing to be sorry about, Princess . . . c’mon, Scott’s gonna need some help with the freezer.”

* * *

Seth breathed into the bottom of the smoking wood pile, and a bright flame erupted in the small circle of stones. A warm glow radiated into their small clearing, and Seth sat back on his heels, clearing his face of smoke. Behind him, Scott was walking the perimeter, whispering something as he dropped oil from a bronze lamp onto the dead grass. Kate stood just behind the fire, a thick red blood candle in her hands. She poured the hot wax into an unfamiliar design, an ancient book held tightly to her chest. The field that surrounded them stretched on for miles, greyness running far deep into the distance with a thunderous moon hovering in the black sky. Miles from them, a mountain range watched their steady descent into the Underworld.

Seth stood, dusting his hands of soot, and looked to her. Her brow was furrowed, either in concentration or worry, he wasn’t sure. She finished her design with a word that sounded unholy and placed the fifth candle to complete the half circle of candles behind the symbol.

Far on the other side of the fire, the freezer door was opened. They had disconnected the generator ten minutes ago, but the creature still hadn’t moved. Seth snatched his rifle loaded with venom-doused bullets up off the ground and went to look inside.

It looked almost fake. Like a creature of that magnitude would never sleep. Never rest. Scott appeared on the other side of the freezer, his own gun locked and loaded.

               “You good, man?” He asked.

Seth couldn’t even see his brother’s resemblance any more in the mask of scales and teeth. He nodded. “Let’s just get this over with.”

As they approached, Kate turned around, her eyes glowing in the fire light.

               “Everything’s set,” Scott said. “What do you need us to do?”

Kate took off her outer layer and her gloves. She shivered once before picking up the book again. “Don’t get in my way . . . and try not to die.”

Seth tried to swallow down the knot in his throat. This could all go so terribly wrong. And it would be his fault again.

He should tell her. Tell her now. _While you can_.

               “Kate?”

               “Yeah?”

Their eyes met and he felt his chest expand. “Kick his ass.”

The boys stepped back and Kate’s eyes dropped to the page. She began speaking a language that sounded like the crush of gravel beneath booted heels, and the crack of a metal gate clanging shut. Her lips jumbled over the words, over the pronunciations, over the lettering. But she read in a clear, firm voice, as if telling not saying. Demanding, not pleading. She looked so small in the hood lights of the pick-up truck behind her, in the dance of the flames before her.

               “So, what now? We just wait?” Seth murmured to Scott, not looking away.

Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. Last time, Alazar was coaching her, talking her through it. I don’t know what to—,”

A harsh clap of lightning ripped down from the sky and struck Kate midsentence. The force of the impact blew Scott and Seth off their feet, their guns flying from their hands. Someone screamed her name.

Seth blinked, momentarily blind from the white light, a sharp buzzing in his ears. He rolled off his back, struggling to his feet, desperately trying to see. When the light focused, his mouth dropped.

As though frozen in time, Kate hovered in the air, her toes just skimming the ground, completely stationary. Her hand was outstretched and the book hovered inches from her finger tips. She looked as though she had tried to move, tried to jump, and then the world ceased its turning. Around her, flows of electricity ran smoothly down her skin, into the night air, from her feet out onto the symbol below her.

               “Kate?” Seth heard Scott whisper from his right.

Her hair and clothes fluttered in some nonexistent breeze. Her mouth was open in surprise and she spoke not a word. But her eyes . . .

They were blacker than the night around them.

Without warning, a bolt of white lightning erupted from her and shot into the dark, missing the freezer by a few feet. A second bolt fired, this one extending from her core like an expanding wing. With the sound of fabric tearing, the lighting ripped up the ground in front of her, then shot into the sky.

               “Something’s wrong,” Seth yelled. “She can’t control it. She’s trying to hit Richie, but she can’t find him.”

Another switch of lightning snapped into the night, this one dangerously close to Seth. The ground exploded, and he lunged to the side. _“Jesus Christ—_ ,”

               “We have to help her—,” Scott roared back over the swell of the electricity. She, it— the cocoon she was encased in— began vibrating and with it came an anxious noise. Another missile was building, and something dropped in Seth’s stomach. He scrambled to his feet, the noise almost a high-pitched whine, and the electricity fired. Seth leapt, his body shoving into Scott, knocking him out of the way, and the lightning collided into his being.

Seth tumbled. His skin was pulsating, twitching, dancing. He felt like he was moving too fast, leaving his body behind as he rolled in the ground. Something jerked painfully within him, and the vibrating stopped. Panting, Seth lifted his head off the ground, looking into white light ahead of him.

A smoky figure was emerging, its form not entirely corporeal. It lifted itself up off the grass, shaking its thick arms. It cracked its neck and lifted its shaggy head.

His own face, intangible and grey, with eyes redder than fresh blood, stared back at him and smirked.

               “Hello, brother.”

Seth hauled himself to his feet, mouth open. His shadow form stretched.

               “Whew, it has been a long time since you let me out. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”

               “What the fuck are you?” Seth breathed. The darkness sniggered and began to pace around him.

               “What does it look like, ya mook? I’m you. The fun side. The side you’ve been trying to bury for a while now.”

Seth glanced to Scott’s immobile form. The land must have knocked him out. The shadow looked too. “Ouch. Full force take-down by Seth Gecko. Hate to be on the receiving end of that.”

               “What are you even doing here?” Seth asked, his heart pounding.

His opposite shrugged. “Getting blasted by the Splitting of Souls is kind of a bitch. But the better question is, what are _you_ doing here? In goddamn Alaska? Really?”

               “This, this is the only way to help Richie.”

The shadow groaned, rolling its red eyes, and looked at the meat freezer. “That shit-for-brains? We’re still hauling his ass around? Jesus Christ, it’s been twenty years, time to cut that dead weight.”

               “He’s my brother, asshole. If you were me, you’d know that,” Seth snarled.

               “Yeah, okay, pal, sure.” The shadow winked, before slowly turning its gaze to Kate, still hovering an inch of the ground. “I’m sure it’s not _nothin’_ to do with that sweet, _dripping_ wet, little peach you got right there— Mhmm, hm, hm—,”

Its spectral hand slid down its chest, and grabbed itself by the crotch. Seth leapt forward and shoved the specter . . . and stumbled right through. It didn’t pay him any attention, as though he didn’t just walk through its incorporeal being.

“Oh, come off it, I’m you,” it said, bored.” You know damn good and well it’s her face on the Jumbo Tron when you jerk off in the middle of the night, desperately trying to remember what her moans sounded like— what she felt like— what she tasted like when she screamed our name—,”

A spike of memories flashed in his mind—

The beach—

The bed—

Her sweat—

Nails on his back—

The specter turned its head to him, its lips moving but Kate’s frantic words coming out. “Please, Seth— Seth— Oh God, please—,”

Seth

Seth

               “ _Seth!_ ”

He stumbled to the ground, the images swarming his brain like fire ants. His skull pounded in agony. “Stop, I’m begging you.”

The shadow rolled its eyes, walking around him.

His brain felt like it was on fire, his eyeballs too big in their sockets. Every muscle in his head was tightening, shortening, his jaw clenched.

“You don’t get the irony in that, do you? _I am you_ , dingus, and I know you just love it when Kate’s a slut for you. When she’s your _dirty little girl_.”

His head was swimming, his vision blurred, from the racket of pain in his skull. The world was throbbing. The shadow crouched down by his head, as he gasped for breath.

               “So, between us, let’s not pretend the reason you’re up here freezing your ass off is your fuck-face little brother. Who, by the way, abandoned you for a snake queen, let’s not forget.” It looked back to the charged white lightning, its smoky hand dangling between its thighs. “You’re here because you want round two with that hot little ass—,” it bits lip and groaned, one hand stretched out, squeezing air, “which I can’t really blame you for. But I can blame you for being too much of a pussy to do anything about it.”

It stood and a very solid food collided with Seth’s stomach and he groaned.

               “You’re here because I’m here. On the edge of every conversation, on every glance, on every little touch you think is safe. Because you still think you have a chance of being worth something in her eyes.” The shadow kicked him again, again, and a third time and Seth spit blood. It bent down and grabbed him roughly by his hair. “Now, I’m only in your melon, but c’mon, let’s really think about that. Daddy and Mommy were only together because he accidentally got the bitch pregnant. Imagine her horror when she found out she was pregnant again with another one of his little demons. Is that what you’re going to do to her, Little Ms. Kate, huh? Turn her into a thing she loathes because she can’t stand the goddamn sight of you.”

A grey memory of his mother smoking a cigarette outside their trailer one foggy morning rose in his mind. She was thin. Richie was just a baby and that was the first time Seth felt guilt in his life and he never knew why.

               “There it is, buddy, that memory. Hold onto that for me, okay? It’s a keeper.” The shadow roughly slapped his cheek, and Seth turned and spit blood in the dirt. It stood, and he rolled himself onto his stomach, his arms weak.

Something was buzzing in his ear, like a misplaced word, or an idea on the tip of his tongue. Seth swallowed the blood in his mouth and listened.

_Seth? Seth? Can you hear me?_

His mouth wasn’t working properly. “Kate?”

The shadow spun. “Yes, dumbass, the whole point of this thing, right up there. Katherine Fuller. Oh my God, you want to fuck her senseless and you don’t even know her middle name. What the fuck do you think you could even possibly offer her?”

_Focus, Seth. You have to fight this._

_Kate?_ He thought, the voice in his head certainly not his own. He glanced to the strobe of white lightning. She was still frozen, her black eyes reflecting the crackling electricity around her. She didn’t move or speak.

_Yes! It’s me! Oh, wow, you can hear me!_

_How?_

_I honestly have no idea. But you need to get up and fight. I’m going to try again and aim for Richie but everything’s kind of blurry here and I don’t want to hit you instead. Again. Sorry._

_Are you okay?_

_Yeah, I’m fine. But you have to get up!_

Seth groaned and pushed himself onto his knees. “Okay, so what do you want?”

               “What?” The darkness hovered back towards him.

               “Why are you here, what do you want, how do I get you to shut up— the whole nine yards.” Seth spit onto the ground again. He was beginning to regain use of his arms and legs.

               “Jesus Christ, no wonder Dad used to beat the shit out of us. You are so dense.” The shadow crossed the field and grabbed him by his jacket, hauling him to his feet. Its red eyes glittered and it was nauseating to see his own face filled with so much hate. “For the last goddamn time, I am you. I want what you want. In the darkest places of your soul, Seth. You want Kate Fuller, _mind, body, and soul_ , and she’s never going to give any of it to you. Not after what you did. So, as all good criminals do, you have to fucking take it.”

His shadow brought up a closed fist and cracked him across the cheek. Again. And again.

               “It’s about time you realized life’s not giving you shit.” The shadow threw him and Seth stumbled, the ground rising suddenly. He wiped blood from his nose.

               “So what does it matter to you?” he breathed, hands on his thighs.

               “I want us to be better, you fuck. With Retard Richard slowing us down, and your new inability to use your dick, we’ve fallen off the wagon, Seth. El Rey, do you even remember that?”

               “Plans change.” Seth wiped the corner of his mouth clean of blood.

               “Why are you fighting me on this, brother? You know this is what you want.”

Seth half-shrugged, his back aching. “Let’s say I’ve got a gift for nosing out gifted and talented liars.”

 “Have I lied to you once, tonight?” The shadow scowled. “You won’t listen because you don’t think I’m real enough. Let me tell you something, bucko. I _am_ real and I’ve been right here your entire miserable life.” The shadow touched the space over his heart, smirking. “I am here of every second of every goddamn day and you only got anywhere in life, including into _that_ , because of me.”

“I’m never going to touch her again,” Seth growled. The shadow paused, its expression blank, before letting out a disgusting laugh, doubling over.

“Oh, that’s ri-i-ight. _Because you love her_. Jesus Christ, that’s _fucking rich!_ If Dad could see you now . . . balls in some little girl’s purse . . .” The laughter died and something dark and hideous overtook its face. “She made you weak. She made you fucking weak and you can’t even see it, you fucking idiot.”

The shadow swung, but he dodged. Seth recoiled and threw a fist toward— and it passed through clean air. The shadow chuckled. “Sucks, don’t it?”

It knocked him square in the jaw and he stumbled. Once, twice, more it hit him before kicking him in the chest. Seth lost his footing and fell to the ground, rolling nearby the fire.

_I can’t do it. I can’t beat him. I can’t even touch him._

_Seth, can you hear me? Please, this isn’t you— you’re better than this—_

               “You don’t deserve to be here.” The shadow snarled and approached him. “I should be the one in charge. Me. I’m the one who pulled the best scores. I’m the one who ever did anything that mattered. The world took everything from me and I deserve to take it all back.” It grabbed him by the front of his jacket again, pulling its face close. “Plus, I’m the only one who can give Kate what she really needs.”

_Kate, are you ready? We’re only going to get one shot at this._

_Yes, I’m ready. Do it._

Seth’s limp hand fell by the crackling fire. His fingers closed around the unburnt length of wood.

               “You don’t have the stones to _fuck her_ until she can’t—,”

TWAP. Seth crashed the lit end of the log against the shadow’s face and it dropped him, hissing.

               “Alright, I believe you now. You do exist.” The shadow was gasping, the sound more demonic than human. Seth walked towards it, purposeful and slow. “You’ve been a part of me for years and it’s about time we talked things out.”

Still holding the burning torch, Seth swiped the shadow up across its face and it fell back.

               “You and I have always been at odds. You get an inch, I get an inch, until we’re right at the center. Well, things are changing. I’m nothing like you. And I’m never going to be.”

Seth dropped down onto one knee, over the shadow. Its face was marred, his own skin loose, and something darker, more monstrous underneath. It gasped, the sound a death rattle.

               “I’m never going to let you or anyone else ever go near Kate again. I may be weak but you’re the piece of shit who hurt her in the first place.”

With a quick jab, Seth shoved the burning, chipped end of the log directly into the shadow’s chest. It howled, thrashing beneath him. It clawed at him with sharp talons.

He smirked, holding the stake in one hand, and steading it in his other palm. “You lose, asshole. Tell Dad I said hi in hell.”

And he pushed down.

The creature screamed, its skin melting in a brush of cracking fire. Seth leapt to his feet, the smoke disintegrating into his eyes. Behind him, the energetic sound was rising again, and without warning, Kate fired another bolt, this one colliding directly with the meat freezer. It exploded in a cacophony of light and sound.

In the white light, something was screaming, becoming more human ever passing second.

The energy snapped and Seth was blown off his feet. Something rough slid against his back and his elbow caught against a stone.

He rolled, ears buzzing, before crashing to a stop.

Silence.

And then, like someone slowly flipping switches, night sounds began turning on. Somewhere in the distance, an owl asked its question, and the fire crackled and sparked. A wind blew overhead, whistling as it went.

Seth lifted his head. His nose was running bloody and his head was aching something terrible, but everything felt attached and in one piece. He gazed out in front of him.

Kate’s form was still, a large cut up her cheek, but she was breathing. Scott, opposite him, was unconscious, but seemingly unharmed. Seth groaned as he sat up.

There in the place where the freezer had been, was a smoking husk. In the center, in between layers of grey and green scales cracked open like a pumpkin, was Richie. A naked, shivering, sticky Richie, but a human one nonetheless.

Seth groaned, and laid back down. “Oh, thank Christ.”

* * *

It was late afternoon when the house was finally quiet again. Scott was fast asleep, face down on the couch in the living room, his right arm bandaged and his shoulder popped back in place. Richie, cleaned as much as possible of whatever remnant goo, had been unconscious for several hours, after they had gotten him back to the farmhouse. He had been awake for only seconds, Seth frantically shaking him, at the ritual site, before passing out again. From what Kate could tell, all his vital signs were normal. After a quick check, it was definite that he was still a culebra, but certainly one that was more manageable than the monster he had been. The three loaded him up into the cab of the truck, wrapped him in a blanket, with Seth driving and Scott and Kate in the bed. He had driven through the night, arriving to the farm minutes before sunrise. Scott gently offered up his bed for the time being.

Kate, of course, had been the most sensible and suggested that when he woke up, he would need to feed. Since then, the three had been alternating between a needle and a jar, filling them with donated blood. Scott had been the one to go first, giving up as much as possible before unhooking himself and falling fast asleep on the couch. Kate was next, and afterward, she had gone back into her room to sleep.

Seth, the last one, sat at the kitchen table, watching the sun blare golden against the tree lines. His arm was out stretched in front of him, a needle deep in his vein, and slowly the third jar rose with blood.

He was tired. Bone tired. Uncle Eddie would come home some nights, complaining that if he went any further, his knees would snap in half and his toes would turn to dust. He mostly said it to earn the groans of disgust from a little Seth and Richie, but twenty years later, he knew it was all too real. His eyelids felt heavy and he strained to focus, his arm starting to throb. Every inch of him ached.

_I want what you want. In the darkest places of your soul, Seth. You want Kate Fuller, mind, body, and soul, and she’s never going to give any of it to you. Not after what you did._

Seth jerked awake, the coming blow nearly landing. Outside, the woods were less restless, and evening was coming. Carefully, as Kate had shown him and Scott, he pulled out the needle and immediately grabbed a paper napkin over the wound. He stood, and whisking carefully passed an unconscious Scott, he rapt on her door.

               “Kate, you awake? Could we chat for a second?”

There was a pause, a breath in his chest, as well as in the air— and the door opened, showing a semi-alert Kate.

               “What’s wrong? Did Richie wake up?”

Seth shook his head. “No, but I have something I want to discuss. With you.”

She watched him, her mouth a hard line, alertness growing with every second. Her neck was still pink from her nap. Her eyebrows were drawn down slightly, as if she was distrustful of whatever he was about to say. Her gaze fell to his arm, where he still held the napkin to staunch the blood.

               “Come in. I can get you something for that.”

Seth went and sat on the bed. She returned from her bathroom with the medicine kit in her hands, and perched herself next to him. Silently, Kate took his arm in her lap and briefly removed the napkin to see the level of blood flow.

               “What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked quietly.

The fading sunlight caught her across the eyes, like a golden mask. Her eyelashes casted shadows, natural highlights in her hair shimmering brightly. She glowed. Effervescent.

As long as she was alive, somewhere, even without him— as long as she lived, drew breath, and existed, he was satisfied. His dark self suggested he wanted to own her, take her whole, when simply, it was the other way around. She consumed him. As long as Kate Fuller was in the world, there was something worth fighting for.

               “Seth, please, just tell me—,”

               “Richie and I are leaving.”

Her hands drew back. “What?”

He smoothed down the bandage and rolled his sleeves back up his arm. Seth sighed.

               “I promised you that we would put you and this town in our rearview mirror the second we got what we came for. And we have. Richie’s no longer dying. In the scope of things, that’s all I can ask for.”

Kate shook her head slightly. “But he’s still a culebra. You said you wanted him human—,”

Seth took her hand in his. “I wanted him safe. And now he is, thanks to you and Boy Wonder out there. Whatever happens next, that’s someone else’s problem. It’s _not_ yours,” he said, slowly.

She frowned, but something else lined her face. Something that, he was surprised to find, felt a whole lot like worry. “But Richard, he’s so weak right now. We don’t know if there will be any residual side effects . . .”

               “Hey, I said I’m leaving, but not for a while.” Seth grinned and stood up off the bed. “You got me for the time being, alright, sweetheart?”

Kate swallowed. “Wait, that’s it? That’s all you wanted to say?”

_No, not in a million years._

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You were expecting something different?”

Kate’s gaze hardened. “No, I guess not.”

               “Alright then.” He went to the door. “I’m gonna make some lasagna. You want some?”

Kate was staring out the window, her arms clutching her chest. Her profile, every dip and curve, stood out brilliantly against the dying light. His chest tightened, but he waited.

               “No. But wake up Scott. He might be hungry.”

Seth left, the door swinging shut behind him. He left knowing he had somehow monumentally screwed up, yet again.

* * *

It was heavily night when Seth slowly opened Scott’s bedroom door. Richie, clothed in what was an old plaid pajama set, snored softly. His glasses always added a layer of fortitude to his brother’s face. Those were long gone by now, and only when he slept, Seth remembered they were only Irish twins, nearly a year younger. Quietly, Seth slid a blood jar onto the table next to his brother and sighed. He leaned against the bed next to him, his arms crossed.

               “Do you remember that time we chased Ms. Briggs’s cat into the woods when we were eight and got lost for like, two days? Shit, Dad was pissed.” Seth shook his head. “I’m pretty sure the only reason we survived was because you had read every goddamn book about living in the wild to train to be a boy scout. I told you there wasn’t an entrance exam but you fucking did it anyway. But remember on that first night when we thought that raccoon was just about the scariest damn thing we’d ever seen?”  He grinned to himself and watched his brother sleep. “Shit, it was simple back then. No snake monsters, no cops on our ass. The biggest thing we had to worry about was to stay out of Dad’s reach and you knew how to get him so drunk, he couldn’t walk. Running for our lives was a lot different when Dad was the worst thing out there.”

He bit his lip and glanced at the door, half expecting her to walk it, as though thinking about her so much would somehow summon her to his side.

               “I told you when you got through this I would tell you what happened in Mexico. You don’t talk about it and neither do I. We know to avoid the things that hurt us.” Seth scratched at a hangnail, his stomach tussling. “I could probably give you the long version, and it’s not like we don’t have all the time in the world, but hey, fair’s fair. The short answer, I think I fell in love with her, Rich. She got into me, into every part of me, and in return, I was almost the selfish bastard Dad always said I’d be. I don’t know if I’ve loved her since then, but right now, after all this, I think I do. I think I still do love her. And I’m so goddamn scared of it, I feel like I’m going crazy in my own head.”

               “You’ve always been crazy. I’m just surprised it took a girl to make you realize that.”

Seth whipped to his feet, his eyes wide. “RICHIE—,”

Richie sat up, coughing, and blinked. He rubbed his eyes. “Where the hell are we?”

Seth grabbed his little brother by the head and pulled him to his chest. “Holy shit, buddy, you made it!”

The door burst open, Kate practically kicking it down with Scott on her heels. “Is Richie—,”

Richie shoved Seth away. “God, you smell like smoke and BO.”

Kate rushed forward with a flashlight. She pushed Seth to the side and expanded Richie’s eye with her finger, inspecting it with the light. “Are your pupils dilated? Can you see that?”

               “Ow, Jesus Christ, yes I can see the bright light in my face.” Richard pulled away from her grasp, blinking furiously. “Fuck, what the hell happened?”

               “What do you remember?”

Richie leaned forward, his eyes still watering. “A score. A good one. Then a truck-stop, or a restaurant . . . being in a freezer . . . then, nothing.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder at Seth, who rolled his eyes. “Look, does it really matter? He’s fine. Hey, Richie, got some dinner, you hungry?”

               “And by dinner, do you want like a burger, or like, something of the liquid variety?” Scott piped up from the back. Kate glared at him. “I dunno, just thought I’d ask.”

Kate unscrewed the lid of the jar and handed it to Richie. He slurped it down without pausing once.

               “Guess that answers that question,” Scott mumbled.

Richie finally drew away from the jar, a disgusted look on his face. “Oh God, is that yours Seth?”

               “Yes, asshole, I donated my life force to you so you didn’t wake up starving. I think the words you’re looking are, ‘thank you, Seth, for feeding me.’”

               “You still taste gross.”

Seth shook his head. “I’m gonna let that one pass, just this once, okay? Because shit, you scared the hell out of me.”

After several hours of recounting the past month, Scott had been the first to call it quits. Since his room was currently preoccupied, everyone was force to scatter from the living room and Kate agreed that some sleep wouldn’t hurt anyone. Richie back in bed, looked preoccupied, holding his second blood jar for the night.

               “What’s going on in that noggin of yours, Richard?” Seth asked, as he fiddled with his watch, readying for sleep.

               “I still can’t believe we’re in fucking Alaska.”

Seth snickered. “Yeah, me neither.”

Richie grinned slightly, wearing the same smile he wore when he suggested they use trashcan lids to slide down on a snow-covered hill. “So you’re really in love with Kate Fuller?”

Seth froze.

               “You should probably tell her about the ex-wife then. In case she doesn’t want to get married in a Vegas church, but I dunno, those things were always so classy—,”

               “Shut up, Richard.”

* * *

Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t sleep. Richie was snoring just a few feet away from him, a sound that at one point in his life had been very comforting. Now it sounded like a drill, and the wind outside was a screaming banshee, and the damn water faucet was leaking all night. At the break of dawn, Seth threw off the covers from his pallet on the floor and immediately got dressed. He went into the garage and took out the red tool box from underneath the loft stairs.

The morning was cold. A light fog had descended before they went to bed, and pink strips of sunlight shattered against the water in the air. Seth, breath pumping out before him, went to the truck they had used to load up for the ritual, stored in the open air garage. One of the exploding pieces of the freezer had nicked the engine inside real good, and while the fix Scott had given it in Margot’s field was a good one, it was temporary. Between his mind buzzing with thoughts of her, the terrible things he had heard himself say, and the beginning ache that had nothing to do with being tired, he was restless. Fixing up the engine would do nothing if not shorten the hours between chasing his own thoughts in circles and being around enough people to drive them out. Being around her always helped him to be quiet.

The hood opened with a creak and Seth tossed a maintenance light over the lip and let it hang. Rolling up his plaid sleeves, he set the toolbox on the side of the truck. Slowly, he went through, assessing and categorizing his own inspection. The movement of his fingers kept them from freezing, and the focus kept his mind from wandering.

Outside, the air was lightening, the grey mist fading. He was tightening a screw, when the side garage door opened and closed.

               “Seth, what are you doing in here? It’s so early.”

He jerked the screw, the damn thing fighting him. “What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m trying,” he grunted, “to fix my heated ride around in this frozen wasteland.” He adjusted his grip, straining, before it finally gave way and rolled its way into the slot. “What are you doing awake?” He asked, breathlessly, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Kate, a printed blanket around her shoulders, came up to him, a cup of coffee in her hands. “I couldn’t sleep either.” She said simply. She leaned against the door of the truck, watching him work. “You’re not cold?” She asked, gesturing to his white shirt. He had discarded the sweatshirt about an hour ago, the lingering remnants of heat inside the engine enough.

               “No, but I could use a sip of that.”

Kate offered it up without a word. She watched him silently as he took two big gulps. “So where are you going to go? With Richie?”

Seth shrugged. “Not sure yet. Probably somewhere warmer than here.”

               “So literally anywhere else?” She grinned, the smile tight.

               “Maybe I’ll leave that up for him to decide.”

She nodded, looking away. Her eyes stared passed the dirt and straw on the floor. Back then, it meant she was probably thinking about Scott, or her father, or the Twister. It meant she was troubled. Seth handed the mug back to her. “Why the long face, princess?”

Kate bit the inside of her cheek and inhaled slowly, as though the air could build her up stronger. “Look, Seth, there’s something you should know.”

He put down the screwdriver and leaned against the hood of the car. “What’s that?”

               “Back at the ritual, when you were . . . _split_ . . . I could hear you, both of you, talking,” Kate looked up, her big eyes shaking him to the core. “Talking about me.”

Seth dropped her gaze, tongue wetting his bottom lip. “Okay, what he said, it was wrong, and disgusting—,”

               “No, not that stuff. I mean, he was the darkest part of humanity. Everything I know you’re not. But, Seth, I’ve just been thinking and . . . I . . . did you almost burn the passports because you don’t think you’re good enough for me?”

               “I almost burned the damn passports because you were the best thing that’s ever happened to me and in a moment of real bone-headed selfishness, I was willing to do just about anything to keep you. I knew the second we crossed back into state lines, I had to let you go. I don’t deserve you, Kate, and us meeting never should have happened.”

Her eyes held closed for a second, as though she considered something and released it. “He said something else too and I want you to tell me the truth.”

Seth nodded.

               “He said that _you loved me_. Is it . . . true?” She annunciated every word, making it clear that here was the line in the sand. But the following breath was shaking, trembling. She looked to him and he knew the darkness was right. He was weak. A fool.

It was now or never.

               “I do, Kate. Always have. Richie said he knew, but I don’t believe him, asshole.” He tried to smile but the lump in his throat was sucking his mouth dry. She was still staring at him, still in disbelief. Her eyes shimmered with fresh tears and he felt a bone in his chest snap.

Seth pushed away from the truck, something sick like shame boiling in his stomach. He grabbed his extra layer off the floor, moving towards the house. “Look, I’ll go rent out a room somewhere else, so you don’t have to deal with this—,”

               “Seth, why did you save Scott?”

He froze. She sniffed behind him and when he turned, silent streams of tears were rolling down her flushed cheeks.

               “Because he’s your brother and he’s important to you.”

Kate made a sound like she had been kicked and her gaze fell to the floor. She put the now cold coffee on the hood of the truck and tried to clean her cheeks.

               “Damn it, Seth, would you please stop walking away from me? _I forgive you_ , alright? Is that what you need to hear for you to realize I love you too, you idiot?”

She caught his wrist with her finger tips, and pulled him to her, opened her mouth, and kissed him. He kissed her back. He pressed them up against the door to her blue pick up truck.

If moments could sigh, this would be one of them.

His hand found its spot on her neck and he held her there. Her fingers dug into his shirt. Her cheeks were cold from the tears.

When they broke, Seth ran a thumb under her eyes, but it only made her laugh. She leaned back up against the truck and tried to dry her eyes completely with the blanket. “I cannot tell you how much I didn’t want to be crying when this happened.”

               “’ _When?’_ That makes you sound pretty confident I’d kiss you again,” he murmured, his voice low and rumbling. He gently kissed her jaw, tasting salt. She let out another watery laugh, still dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

               “You drive me crazy, you know that? Sometimes I want to just rip your head off . . . but then put it in a bag.”

               “Why in a bag?”

               “So you don’t get blood on the carpet, duh.” He bit down on her earlobe, and she giggled. “So you’re with me. Always.” She put his gristly face between her soft palms. “I don’t think I could have almost hated you if I didn’t love you so much.”

               “Mmm, not so fast there. I think I get the rights to _loving you_ _blind_. I’ve got it so bad for you, I can’t think straight.”

               “Is this going to become a competition? Who can love the fuck out of the other one more?”

               “Wouldn’t be us if somebody wasn’t a pain in the ass.”

He pecked her cheek and she giggled again. “I’m thinking pancakes.”

Seth almost frowned. Kate never failed to surprise him. “So, what? Just like that, we’re good.”

She put a hand on his neck, thumb rubbing his jaw. “I don’t want to go back to a life you’re not a part of.” Her gaze dropped. He could have sworn he could count her eyelashes hovering above pale skin. “I’m choosing you, Seth. I know you think you’ll never be more than a thief, but you’re wrong.”

She put a small hand over his heart. Her thumb rubbed him thoughtfully. “I know there’s good in you. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. Don’t run from it, okay? Don’t run from me.”

She glanced back up and he quietly took it back. If he had to walk barefoot through hell, he would never have given up Mexico with her, never given up the chance to fall in love all over again. He held the back of her neck and kissed her again. She was warm like coffee.

               “So, pancakes, huh?” He pulled away from her, taking her by the hand. “I’ve heard the trick is to flip them over once in a while.”

“Ha ha, you’re hilarious . . . Oh, wait, the mug.”

She dropped his hand, and the static popped. Kate picked up her now steaming cup of coffee and nearly took his hand, before suddenly dropping the mug.

               “Smooth move, butter fingers.”

But she was still frowning, her mouth open slightly.

               “Kate?”

               “Oh . . . it was just . . . _too hot_.” She sighed, shaking her head with a brief blink of her eyes. “It’s nothing. But c’mon, I know where he stashes the good maple syrup.”

She danced ahead of him, grinning widely, and all he could do was wait to be pulled along after her.


	5. Many, Many, Many Months Later

**Chapter Five: Many, Many, Many Months After**

“I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love.

We are good people and we have suffered enough.” – Nikka Ursula

* * *

 

“Don’t take too much off the top, alright? What’s a cowboy without his sideburns?”

She rolled her eyes and straightened his head again, the scissors in her hand cold against his neck. “Quit moving, Newman, or you’re going to be lopsided.”

Seth grinned at her in the mirror. The cut on her cheek was healing nicely, much slower than he would have liked but she was on the mend. When she changed her bandages later that day, he’d offer to do them for her.

               “Guess you’d have to shave me bald.”

Kate pulled a length of his hair at the nape of his neck between his two fingers and snipped. She shivered. “Don’t even joke. You’d look terrible. Your hair is the only thing minimizing that giant head of yours.”

She brushed the black hair from the white bed sheet around his neck and went to the next layer. Seth quietly marveled at the soft pushes and pulls of her fingers against him and he smiled to himself.

               “What? No outrage that someone would dare degrade the hotness that is Seth Gecko?”

Snip. Snip.

               “Can’t argue with that one. Richie chopped all my hair off in middle school because I put his kite in a tree and Dad had to buzz me clean. Worst three months of my life, growing it out.”

               “You poor baby.”

               “The lunch ladies were devastated.”

Kate threaded her fingers through the back of his hair and made a loose fist. “Can’t imagine why.”

Her eyes flitted to the mirror in front of them and she smirked at him. Seth ran a hand against his jaw. “What about the beard? I’m impartial.”

Kate snorted and went back to cutting his hair. “You’ve never been impartial about anything in your entire life.”

Seth shrugged. “Now that whatever passes for summer in Alaska is on its way, maybe I should get rid of the damn thing.”

Snip. Snip. “I _like_ the beard,” she said quietly.

               “Then I guess it’ll have to stay.”

She paused and glanced at him. He was watching her through the mirror, and saw a warm blush of pink crawl up from her chest. She smiled softly and looked away.

Seth took her free hand, the one resting gently on the back of his neck, and brought it over his shoulder. The gesture pulled her down to where she hung to his side, their faces parallel with each other. Her hand slid out of his grasp and down his sternum, her finger tips just above his stomach. She rubbed his chest with her palm, and he turned his head into her cheek, nose brushing her jaw. His hand came up and threaded through her loose fingers.

               “Seth, I really have to finish this . . .” she said, quietly, but did not pull away. Her skin smelled like her peaches and honey body wash and if the world ended her and now, he might just be okay with that.

               “I’ve waited five years for this. I can wait five more minutes for a goddamn haircut,” he grumbled, his voice low and eyes closed.

The moment stretched on. Somewhere in the house, Scott was moving, the dull trod of his feet echoing in the small white bathroom. Beyond that, Richie was probably still asleep in the loft, this early in the morning only the middle of the night for him. Sunlight streamed in from the blurry window and each strand bounced off the shiny white surfaces, crossing and reflecting, engulfing the room in a golden haze and Seth felt disconnected from time itself.

She lifted her head and pressed a warm kiss to the curve of his neck and shoulder, then placed another between the knuckles of his marred hand.

               “I’m happy you’re here,” she murmured into his skin.

               “Never going to leave again, Princess. Never.”

Her lips brushed against the back of his ear and she stood up right. Seth closed his eyes, body feeling luminous.

Her hands dove back into his hair, scissor cutting the tips. After a while, she began humming a quiet tune, one he didn’t recognize or hear. He was drifting and she was there beside him and in the light, it felt something like peace.

 

_FIN_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah this was just a really cute scene I imagined and it felt like a nice wrap up-- because Seth's hair was getting out of hand. Thank you guys for the kudos and comments-- they mean the world to me! And actually, yes, I am planning a sequel where we see Kate address this new power she has and what that exactly means (the coco reheating in the last chapter was evidence of that). Plus, appearances by Kisa and Carlos! Haven't started yet, but I have written some scenes, so if you guys want to read them ahead of time, msg me on my tumblr: youbecool 
> 
> Again, thanks for the ride :)


End file.
